The Rudolf Steiner Archive

I will begin today with the soul-life of man, and lead on from thence to a penetration into cosmic secrets.

Let us start with something of the very simplest. Let us consider the soul-life of a human being as it is seen when he carries his inner self-reflection beyond the point I specially had in mind when I wrote the articles in the Goetheanum on the Life of the Soul. (Now published as a brochure entitled Vom Seelenleben). We shall consider the soul-life more intimately than was done in the Goetheanum articles. Those four articles on the soul-life form a kind of introduction, a preparation for that which we are now to consider.

When we practise self-reflection in a wide and comprehensive way, we see how this soul-life can be raised to a level higher. We begin by letting the external world work upon us—we do this from childhood—and then we form thoughts upon that which the outer world has brought to us. We are really human beings in that we allow the impressions of the outer world to live on further in our thoughts, realising them inwardly in our thoughts, creating a world of mental pictures, which in a certain way reflect the impressions made on us from outside. We are not doing anything specially helpful for the soul-life if we simply form a number of thoughts as to how the outer world is reflected in our soul, for in so doing we only attain what I might call a shadowy picture of the world of ideas in our inner being. We really practise better self-reflection if we focus our attention rather on the inner energy, in the attempt to enter livingly ourselves into the element of thought, without looking at the outer world, and follow further in thought what has come to us as impressions of the outer world. One man may thereby be led, according to his disposition, into mere abstract thinking. He may create world-systems, or he may make schemes about all imaginable things in the world, and so on. Another man, while reflecting upon the things that have made an impression on him, and by spinning out his thoughts further, may perhaps evolve some even more fanciful conception or other.

We will not enter further into the way in which, according to temperament or character or other influences on a man, this inner thinking, devoid of outer impressions, may develop, but we will recognize the fact that it is a matter of especial significance for us when we withdraw in regard to our senses from the outer world and live in our thoughts and ideas, spinning them out even further, often perhaps in the direction of mere possibilities only.

Many people regard it as unnecessary to develop this living in thought, in the direction of mere possibilities. Even in these difficult times one may see people occupied the whole day with their business (which of course is necessary for the outer life) afterwards meeting together in small groups, playing cards or dominoes or such like, in order, as is frequently said, to pass the time. It does not often happen, however, that people come together in such groups in order to exchange thought for instance, about all the things in which they were engaged during the day, and to consider what might have happened if this or that had been different. They would not be so much interested in this as in playing cards, but it would be a spinning out of their thoughts, and if we preserve a sufficiently sound sense of reality such a continuation of our thoughts need not become fantastic.

This life in thoughts leads finally to what you encounter if you read The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity in the right way. If you read The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity in the right way you must become acquainted with this feeling of living in thoughts. The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity is wholly drawn from reality, while at the same time it has proceeded entirely from actual thinking. You will find therefore a fundamental tone or feeling in this Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. I conceived it in the eighties, and wrote it at the beginning of 1890, and I can truly say that in all those who at that time were in a position to make acquaintance with the root-nerve of this Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, everywhere I met with lack of understanding. This lack of understanding arises from a definite reason. Human beings, even the so-called thinkers of today in reality only get so far in their thinking as to experience in it an image of the outer sense-world; and then they say: perhaps there might come into a man's thinking something of a super-physical world, but it would have, to enter in the same way as a chair or a table which is outside of us, and which is acknowledged by our thinking to be outside of us. Thus this thinking which is within us would have to be able to experience in some way or other something super-sensible, outside of man in the same way as the table or chair is outside of us and is experienced. In some such way as this, Edward von Hartmann conceived the activity of thinking.

This book, The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity then came to his notice. In this book thinking is so experienced that within the experience of thinking we come to this realisation, viz. that if a man really experiences thinking, he is living, even if at first somewhat indefinitely, in the cosmos, This union of man in his innermost thinking experience with the cosmic secrets is the root-nerve of The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. Therefore in this book you find the sentence, “In thinking, man lifts an edge of the veil of the cosmic secret.” This is perhaps simply expressed, but it is meant to imply that when a man really experiences thinking, he no longer feels himself to be outside the cosmic secret, but within it, no longer outside the divine Essence but within It. When a man attains to the reality of thinking within himself he attains to the Divine within himself.

It was this fact which could not be understood. For if a man really understands it, if he has really taken the trouble to acquire this experience of thinking, he rests no longer within the world in which he was previously, but he is living in the etheric world. He is living in a world of which he knows: it is not conditioned from any part of physical earthly space, but by the whole cosmic sphere.

He can no longer doubt the order and reality of the cosmic etheric sphere if he has grasped thinking as it is portrayed in the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. Thus he reaches what may be called etheric experience. When a man enters into this experience he really makes a noteworthy step forward in his whole life.

I may characterise this step forward thus: If we think in ordinary consciousness, we think: in this room are tables, chairs, human beings and so on. We may perhaps think of much more also; but we think of these things outside us. Thus we comprehend these things in our thinking—and there are various things outside—from the central point of our being. Every man is aware of this; he wants to grasp the things of the world with his thinking.

If however we have acquired the experience of thinking just characterised, it is no longer the world we should grasp. Man is not so much riveted, as I might say, in his own ego; something entirely different happens. He has the feeling, quite a right feeling, that with his thinking, which is not confined to any one place, he can grasp everything inwardly. He feels that he is contracting the inner man. Just as in his ordinary thinking he extends spiritual feelers outwards, as I might say, so with this thinking which experiences itself within him he extends himself continually into his own being. Man himself becomes the object.

This is a very important experience which a man may have when he realises: formerly you always comprehend the world; now that you have this experience in thinking you must comprehend yourself. The result of this process of strong self-comprehension is that he breaks through the skin.

And just as he inwardly grasps his own self he also grasps from within the entire cosmic ether, not in its details, naturally, but he gains the conviction that this ether is spread out over the cosmic sphere within which he exists together with the stars, sun and moon, etc.

A second thing which man can develop in the inner life of his soul is the power not to be stimulated immediately in his thoughts from outside, not to spin these thoughts out and weave them further, but to give himself up to his memories. If he does this, and really makes his memories an inner experience, then again a quite definite experience results. The experiencing of thinking already described leads a man to himself, he grasps himself; and he has a certain satisfaction in this grasping of his own inner being.

When, however, he passes on to the experience in memory, then, if undergone inwardly in the right way, it finally seems to be no longer the most important thing to approach oneself. This is the case in the experience of thinking. That is why one finds in thinking that freedom which depends entirely on the personal element in man. Therefore, a philosophy of spiritual activity must start from the experience of thinking, because man thereby arrives at his own being; he finds himself as a free personality. This is not the case with the experience of memory. In the experience of memory, if a man follows it up seriously and immerses himself entirely in his memory, he will finally acquire the feeling of becoming free from himself, of getting away from himself. Therefore those memories which enable one to forget the present are the most satisfactory. (I will not say that they are always the best, but they are, in many cases the most satisfactory).

We can get an idea of the value of memory if we can have memories which carry us out into the world, in spite of the fact that we may be completely dissatisfied with the present and would like to get away from it. If we can develop memories of such a nature that our feeling of life is intensified while giving ourselves up to our memories this furnishes what I might call a kind of preparation for what memories may become when they are much more real.

You can make memory a real experience if you recall with the utmost possible realism something which you actually experienced say ten, twenty or thirty years ago. I will merely indicate how this can be done. Suppose you go over your old treasured papers and look up, let us say, old letters which you had written or which. were written to you on some occasion or other. Place these letters before you, and by means of them you will live intensely in the past. Or perhaps a better way may be not to take the letters you have written, or which other people have written to you, because too much subjectivity comes into this; it would be still better, if you are able to do so, to take your old school books and look at them as you did long ago when you really sat in front of them as a child at school, and in this way bring back into your life something which formerly existed. That is really an extraordinary experience. If you carry out something of this kind you change the whole mood of soul which you possess at present. It is very extraordinary. But you must be a little resourceful in this connection, and all kinds of things can help you in this. Perhaps a lady may find in some comer or other a garment, or something she wore twenty years ago; she puts this on and thereby transports herself back into the position in which she was at that time; or anything of a like nature which may bring the past with utmost possible reality into the present. In this way you are able to separate yourself thoroughly from your present experience.

When we have experiences in our present consciousness we really stand too intimately in the experiences, too close for the experiences to result in anything, so to speak. We must be able to stand further away. Man is further away from himself when he sleeps than when he is awake; for he is then outside his physical and etheric bodies with his astral body and ego. When you actually invoke past experiences into the present, as I have described, you draw near to the astral body which is outside the physical body in sleep. You may not at first believe that such a vivification of past experiences by means of an old garment perhaps can have the powerful effect I have indicated, but it is really only a question of making an experiment yourself in these matters. If you do make the experiment and you really enchant into the present what has been experienced in past years so that you can live in it and entirely forget the present you will then see that you draw very near to your astral body, to your astral body of sleep.

Now if you expect that it is only necessary to look to right or left and see a cloudy form as your astral body, you will be disappointed, for it does not happen in that way; you must pay attention to what really does occur. What may really occur is, for example, that after a time, through such experiences, you may gradually see the dawn in a new way; you may have a new feeling on seeing a sunrise. Gradually, along this path you will come to experience the warmth of the dawn as something of a prophetic nature, as if it were announcing something, as if the dawn had a natural prophetic force in itself. You will begin to feel the dawn as spiritually forceful, and you will be able to connect an inner meaning with this prophetic force, so that you get a feeling, which you might at first regard as an illusion, that the dawn is related with your own being. Through such experiences as I have described you may gradually bring yourself into a condition in which you feel when you see the dawn: “The dawn does not leave me alone. It is not merely yonder while I am here; I am inwardly united with this dawn; it is a quality of my own inner feeling. I myself at this moment am the dawn.” When you feel thus united with the dawn so that you yourself experience as it were the colour, radiation, and shining, the appearing of the sun out from the colours and the light, so that in your own heart a sun arises, as it were, out of the morning glow as a living feeling,—then you will also feel as if you yourself are traveling with the sun over the vault of heaven; you will feel that the sun does not leave you alone, the sun is not there while you are here but you feel that your existence extends in a certain sense to the sun existence and that you travel with the light throughout the day.

If you develop this feeling which, as we have said, does not come from thinking—for in that way one can only reach man himself—but which we can develop out of memory in the way indicated, when you develop this experience out of your memory, or rather out of the forces of memory, then the things which you perceived formerly with your physical senses begin to wear a different aspect; they begin to be spiritually and psychically transparent. When a man has once attained this feeling of traveling with the sun, of gaining strength at dawn to go with the sun, he sees all the flowers of the meadow in a different aspect. The blossoms do not remain passive, showing the yellow or red colours which they have on the surface but they begin to speak. They speak to our hearts in a spiritual way. The blossoms become transparent. The spiritual part of the plant stirs inwardly, and the blossoming becomes a kind of speaking.

In this way man really unites his soul with the external life of nature, and he thus gains the impression that there is something behind the existence of nature, that the light with which he has united himself is borne by spiritual Beings, and in these spiritual Beings he gradually comes to recognize the features of that which has been pictured by Anthroposophy.

Let us now consider the two stages of feeling which I have described. Let us take the first feeling which can be brought about through thinking as an inner experience; this inner experience of thinking carries him far, and the feeling of being in a confined space entirely ceases. Man's experience widens out; he feels quite distinctly that in his inner being there is a portion which extends right out into the entire cosmos, and which is of the same substance as the cosmos. He feels himself one with the whole world, with the etheric substance of the world; but he feels too that standing on the earth, his feet and legs are drawn down by the gravity of the earth. He feels that he is bound with his entire human nature to this earth. But in the moment man has this thinking-experience he no longer feels bound to the earth, but he feels himself dependent on the wide spaces of the cosmic sphere. Everything comes from the universe, no longer from below, up from the centre of the earth, but everything comes in from the expanses of space. One feels that if one is to understand man, this feeling of streaming in from space must be there.

This extends even to the understanding of the human form. If I wish to grasp the human form either in sculpture or in painting I can really only do so as regards the lower part of the form by thinking of something proceeding out of the inner bodily nature of man. I shall not be bringing the right spirit into this unless I can draw the upper part in such a manner that I think of it as borne in from outside. Our brow, the upper part of our head is from without and is really placed on the rest of the body. He who has looked with artistic understanding at the paintings in the small cupola in the Goetheanum (now destroyed) will have seen that the lower part of the countenance was always so represented as having grown out from within man, and the upper portion of the head as something given to him from the cosmos. In the ages when men had a feeling for such things this was especially felt. You will never understand the form of a true Grecian sculptured head unless you have this feeling for it, for the Greeks created under the inspiration of such feelings.

Thus man feels himself united with the environment in his experience of thinking.

Now one might imagine that this process was simply carried further, and that one would go still further out when one passes on from the experience of thinking to the experience of memory; but this is not the case. If you really develop this experience of thinking in yourself you will ultimately gain an impression of the third Hierarchy, of the angels, archangels and the Archai.

Just as you may picture man's bodily experience here on earth in the forces of gravity and in the transmutation of nourishment in digestion, so you may also form an idea of the conditions under which these beings of the third Hierarchy live, if, through this experience of thinking, instead of wandering about on the earth you feel yourself carried by forces which stream towards you from the furthest expanses of the cosmos.

Now when man passes from the experiences of thinking to that of memory it is not as if this were the end of the cosmic sphere, the limit to which man can attain. We can reach such a cosmic boundary if we really enter into the reality of this thinking-experience; but we do not then go further out; the matter presents itself differently. Here, for instance, we may have an object of some kind, a crystal, a flower or an animal; and if we pass from the experience of thinking to all that the experience of memory can bring us, then we look right into this object. The gaze which has extended to the universe can, if carried further through the memory-experience, look into things. It is not that you press forward into indefinite abstract distances; the gaze that is carried further looks into things and sees the spiritual in everything. It sees, for example, in the light the active spiritual beings of light, and so on. It sees in the darkness the spiritual beings active therein. So that we can say: the experience of memory leads us into the second Hierarchy.

There still exists something in the human soul-life which goes out beyond memory. Let us make clear to ourselves what this is. Memory gives our soul its colouring. We can know quite exactly, when we approach a man who judges everything in a disapproving way, one who emanates his sour atmosphere over everything, a man who, if one tells him something beautiful immediately replies with something unpleasant, and so on, we can know with certainty that all this is connected with his memory. Memory gives the soul its colouring.

We may meet a man who always has an ironic twist of the mouth, especially if we say something to him; or he may wrinkle up his brow or pull a tragic face. Another man may look at us in a friendly way, so that we are cheered not only by what he says but by the way he looks at us. Indeed it is interesting, at some special statement in a lecture to glance at the countenances in the audience, to see the expression of the mouth, or to look at the foreheads or the blank expression on many of the countenances, or the nobility of many others and so on. In what you see there is expressed not merely what has remained as memory in the soul and has given the soul a certain colouring, but something is expressed which has passed over from the memory into the physiognomy, into the gesture, into the whole attitude of a man. If a man has taken nothing in, if he shows by his countenance that he has not learnt anything by what he has experienced of sorrow, pain or joy in his life, that too is characteristic. If his countenance has remained quite smooth, that is as characteristic as if it expresses in deep wrinkles the tragedy or the earnestness of life, or even perhaps its many satisfactions. That which remains in the soul as the result of the power of memory passes over into and moulds the physical body; and so markedly does this take place that man later actually has from it outwardly his physiognomy and his gestures, and inwardly his temperament, for we have not always the same temperament in old age as we had in childhood. The temperament in old age is often the result of what we have undergone in life, and which has inwardly become memory in the soul.

That which passes inwardly into man in this way can also be carried into reality, though this is more difficult. It is still fairly easy to bring before our soul-vision things which we experienced in childhood or, many years ago, in order to realize memory to a certain extent, but it is more difficult to transpose oneself into the temperament of one's childhood, into one's earlier temperament. But the practice of such an exercise may be of infinite significance for us; and more is really attained when we can do this inwardly in the depths of the soul than if we do something externally.

Something is already attained in a man if, say at the age of forty or fifty, he plays a child's game, or jumps as he did when a child or if he tries to make a face such as he made when an aunt gave him a bonbon when he was eight years of age; and things of that kind.

To transpose oneself back to the very gesture, to the very attitude, brings something into our life which leads convincingly to the feeling that the outer world is the inner world, and the inner world is the outer world.

We then enter with our whole being, e.g., into the flower, and we have in addition to the thought-experience and the memory-experience what I may call the experience of gesture, in the truest sense of the words. From this we gain an idea of how the spiritual everywhere works unimpeded in the physical world.

You cannot apprehend inwardly with full consciousness your behaviour of say twenty years ago as regards your gesture on any occasion without realizing the union of the spiritual and the physical in all things; that is, if you penetrate into the depths of this matter with all earnestness and energy. Then you have arrived at the experience of the first Hierarchy.

 Thought-experience: third Hierarchy. Memory-experience: second Hierarchy. Gesture-experience: first Hierarchy. 

The memory-experience leads us to identify ourselves with the dawn when we stand face to face with the morning glow. It enables us to feel inwardly, to experience inwardly all the warmth of the dawn; but when we rise to the experience of gesture, then that which approaches us in the dawn unites with everything that can be experienced objectively as colour or tone.

When we regard the objects around us illuminated by the sun and simply look at them as they appear to us, we see them in the light. But we do not see the dawn in this way, especially when we pass over gradually from the memory-experience to the experience of gesture; then everything which is experienced as colour gradually separates itself off from all material existence. The experience of colour becomes living, it becomes psychic, spiritual. It forsakes the space in which the external dawn appears to us. The dawn begins then to speak to us of the secret of the connection of the sun with the earth; and we learn how the Beings of the first Hierarchy work. When we again turn our gaze to the dawn and it appears to us almost as it did formerly in the mere experience of memory we learn to recognize the Thrones. Then the dawn dissolves away. The colour becomes living, becomes psychic, becomes spiritual, becomes a Being, and speaks to us of the relation of the sun to the earth as it once existed in the old Sun-period; it speaks to us in such a manner that we learn what the Cherubim are. And then, when full of enthusiasm and veneration we are carried away by this two-fold revelation of the dawn, the revelation of the Thrones and of the Cherubim, and we live on further within the soul, there presses into our own inner being, from out of the living Being which the dawn has now become, that which constitutes the nature of the Seraphim.

Everything which I have described to you today, I have done simply to point out how, from the simple following on in the soul from thinking to the gesture that is full of thought and permeated by soul, man can acquire for himself a feeling (for, to begin with he has only feelings) about the spiritual foundations of the cosmos, right up to the sphere of the Seraphim.

I wanted to give you this as a kind of introduction to the studies which are to lead us on from the soul-life out into the expanses of the spiritual cosmos.

If we seek to continue the study of the soul-nature to which we devoted our attention in yesterday's lecture, and investigate the activity of the soul-nature in physical man in reference to those things which we also discussed yesterday we are led in two directions. Memory points the soul back into former experiences; thinking leads the soul, as I explained yesterday, into etheric existence. That which can lay hold of man, even more strongly than memory, so strongly that the inner impulses pass over into his bodily substance, I called in yesterday's lecture, gesture. In observing gesture and its nature we have advanced to the revelation of the soul and spirit in the physical.

The whole entrance of man into physical earthly life is a taking possession of the physical by the soul and spirit, and if, to begin with, we limit our considerations to memory, we find that this consists in what we experienced at an early age being carried over into later years.

The question now arises just as memory points back to things in the past course of earthly life, is there anything in human life that points us still further back? Can we look back to that which lies before the entrance of man into earthly life?

Here we come to two things, namely, that which man has undergone spiritually and psychically in pre-earthly existence (which we will leave to a later consideration) and something else connected with the physical bodily nature which man as an individual being brings into it. I mean, everything which we are accustomed from our natural-scientific ideas to designate as heredity. Man bears within him right into the tendencies of his own temperament those impulses, those characteristics which play so great a part in the soul, and which are connected with that which was peculiar to his physical ancestors.

Of course our modern humanity treats such things with superficiality, with foolishness. For instance, this very morning I read a book which deals with a ruler of a well-known royal house, now extinct. This book devotes itself to the question of heredity in this house. Qualities are mentioned which can be traced back in heredity to the seventh century. In this book dealing with heredity there occurs a peculiar sentence, running somewhat as follows: “In this royal house there are members who show clearly that they incline towards extravagance, to absurdities of life, excesses, and so on. Yet there are also members of this house who have none of these tendencies.” As you see, this is a peculiar kind of thinking, for one might really suppose that a writer who makes a remark of this kind would have to admit that one cannot draw conclusions from such circumstances. But if you go into many of the things which at the present time lead to what are called well-founded views you will find many things of this kind.

Even though the prevailing views on heredity may appear somewhat superficial one must admit that man does carry inherited characteristics within him. That is the one side; man has often to fight these inherited characteristics. He must, as it were, strip them away in order to attain that for which he was prepared by the life before earthly existence.

The other side to which our attention is drawn is that which man acquires through education, through intercourse with his fellowman, and also through intercourse with external nature. From the habits acquired through observing the lower kingdoms of nature, this is called the adaptation of man to the conditions around him. As you know, our modern natural science considers these two impulses of heredity and adaptation the most important influences on living beings.

When we penetrate into these facts we feel, if we regard them without prejudice, that unless a man finds his way into the spiritual world he can come to no conclusion about such things. We will therefore today consider in the light of spiritual knowledge things which we meet with in life at every turn.

For this we must go back to something which has occupied us repeatedly in former studies. We have often had to refer to the exit of the moon from the earthly planet, and have shown that the moon was formerly united with the earth-planet, and, at a definite point of time left the earth in order to influence it from afar. I have also pointed out that a spiritual cause underlies this exit of the moon. I have told you how once upon a time on the earth there lived super-human beings who were the first great Teachers of humanity, and from whom proceeded what on the basis of our human earthly thought may be designated the Primeval Wisdom, which is everywhere to be found as an original woof or weft, which is of deep significance and arouses reverence even in the shape of the fragmentary remains which exist today. This wisdom was once the content of the teachings of these great superhuman Teachers at the starting-point of earthly human evolution.

These Beings found their way into the moon-existence and are there today, united with the moon. They belong to the population of the moon, as it were. Now the point is that when man passes through the gate of death he travels by a series of stages through the realm of the planetary world which belongs to our earth. We have already considered how, after having passed through earthly existence, he enters first into the sphere of activity of the moon, then into the sphere of activity of Venus, Mercury, Sun, and so on. Today it may interest us to learn how he comes into the sphere of the moon-activity.

I have already indicated how the life of man can be followed with Imaginative vision beyond the gate of death, and that that which man is as spirit appears after he has laid aside the physical body which is given over to the elements of the earth, and after he has seen his etheric body taken up by the etheric sphere which is united with the earth; there still remains the spirit and soul part of man, the ego and the astral body.

If with Imaginative vision we follow what thus goes through the gate of death it always presents itself in a form. That is the form which gives actual shape to the physical substance which man carries in himself. This form, compared with the robust physical body, is but a kind of shadowy picture, but on the soul's feeling and perception it makes a powerful and intense impression. In this form the head of man appears but faintly to the gaze of the soul. The rest of it is robust, and gradually on the passage between death and rebirth this form transforms itself into the head of the next incarnation.

We must here say something about this form which can be seen by Imaginative vision after a man has gone through the gate of death. It bears a true physiognomical expression. It is in a sense a true image of the way in which the man here in his physical earthly life was good or evil. Here in physical earthly life a man can conceal the fact as to whether good or evil prevails in his soul, but after his death he can no longer conceal this. When therefore we look at the spirit-form which remains after death we see that it bears the physiognomical expression of what the man was on earth.

One who carries through the gate of death that which is morally evil united with his soul bears a physiognomical expression through which he becomes outwardly similar, if I may say so, to Ahrimanic forms. It is absolutely a fact that, during the first period after death, a man's whole feeling and perception is conditioned by that which he can reproduce in, himself.

If he has the physiognomy of Ahriman because he has carried moral evil in his soul through the gate of death, he can only reproduce, which means perceive, what bears a likeness to Ahriman. He is in a sense psychically blind to those human souls who have passed through the gate of death, having a good moral disposition. Indeed, that belongs to the severest judgment which man can suffer after he has passed through the gate of death, that in so far as he himself is evil he is only able to see those beings like unto himself, because he can only reproduce in himself that which forms the physiognomy of evil men.

Having passed through the gate of death he now enters the sphere of the moon. There he comes into the presence of super-sensible, super-physical beings, but always such as are similar in physiognomy to himself; thus he who carries evil through the gate of death comes into the vicinity of Ahrimanic forms. This passage through an Ahrimanic world has in the case of certain human beings a quite definite significance in the whole connection of cosmic events; and we shall understand what really happens there if we bear in mind the actual purpose of the journey of the wise human Guides of old to the moon-colony of the cosmos.

Besides the Beings of the higher Hierarchies whom we usually call angels, archangels and so on, there are also, bound up with the whole cosmic evolution those Beings who belong to the Luciferic and Ahrimanic kingdoms. These Beings work in the whole cosmic connection just as do those who are developing normally. The Luciferic beings work in such a way that they seek to draw further away from physical materiality that which has the tendency in itself to press forward to that materiality. In the sphere of humanity the Luciferic beings work so that they use every opportunity to lift man away from his physical body. The Luciferic beings endeavour to make of man a purely spiritual psychic etheric being. The Ahrimanic forms however endeavour to separate off everything from man which can develop him towards a psychic and spiritual nature, which should now develop in humanity. They would like to change what is sub-human—that which lies in the impulses, instincts, and so on, and which expresses itself in the body—and transform it into the spiritual. To transform man into a spiritual being is the tendency both of the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic beings. Lucifer seeks to draw out of man the spirit and soul, so that he should no longer trouble himself about earthly incarnations but wish to live solely as a being of soul and spirit. The Ahrimanic beings on the other hand prefer not to trouble at all about the soul and spirit of man; but that which is given him as a covering, as a garment, as an instrument, namely the physical and etheric bodies, these they seek to separate and bring into their own world.

Man is on the one hand facing the Beings of the normally developing Hierarchies, but because he is woven into the whole of existence he faces also the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forms.

The point is that every time the Luciferic forms make efforts to approach man their object is to estrange him from the earth. On the other hand, when the Ahrimanic forms make efforts to dominate him they seek to make him more and more earthly, although they also wish to spiritualise the earth into dense spiritual substance and permeate it with dense spiritual forces.

When we discuss spiritual matters we have to use expressions which may perhaps appear grotesque in such a connection, but we must make use of human language. Therefore permit me to use ordinary human words for something which takes place purely in the spirit; you will understand me. You will have to raise what I must express in this way into the spiritual.

The same beings who as the great Teachers brought that ancient wisdom to man at the beginning of earthly existence withdrew to the moon in order, so far as lay in their power, to bring the Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements into the right relation to human life. Why was this necessary? Why did such exalted beings as these great primeval Teachers decide to leave the earthly sphere in which they had worked for a time, and proceed to the moon-sphere outside the earth, in order as far as was possible to bring the Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements into the right relationship with man?

When man, as a being of soul and spirit, descends to the earthly sphere from his pre-earthly existence he traverses that path which I have described recently in the course of lectures on Cosmology, Religion and Philosophy. He has a definite spiritual-psychic existence. He unites this with what is given him on the pure line of inheritance through father and mother, with the physical embryonic existence. These two, the physical embryonic and the spiritual existence interpenetrate each other. They unite with each other; and in this way man comes into earthly existence. But in that which lives in the line of inheritance, in that which comes down from the ancestors in the way of inherited characteristics is contained that which gives the Ahrimanic beings their point of attack on the nature of man. The Ahrimanic forces dwell in the forces of heredity, and when man carries in himself many of these inherited impulses he has a bodily nature into which the ego cannot enter very satisfactorily. It is indeed the secret of many human beings that they have within them too many of these inherited impulses. This is called today “being burdened with heredity.” The consequence of this is that the ego cannot enter fully into the body; it cannot completely fill out all the individual organs of the body. So the body in a sense develops an activity of its own side by side with the impulses of the ego which actually belongs to this body. Thus these Ahrimanic powers, in making efforts to put as much as possible into heredity, succeed thereby in making the ego fit very loosely into the human being; that is the one thing.

Man is however also subject to the influence of external conditions. You may realize how strongly man is subject to this influence from external conditions if you consider all the influence which climatic or other geographical conditions have on him. This influence of the purely natural environment is indeed of extraordinary significance to man. There were even times when this influence of the natural environment was utilized in a special way in the guidance of the wise Leaders of humanity.

When, for example, we consider something very remarkable in Ancient Greece, the distinction between the Spartans and the Athenians, we must say this difference which is described in a very superficial way in our ordinary history books rests on something which goes back to the regulations of the ancient Mysteries, which worked so as to bring about different results for the Spartans and the Athenians.

In ancient Greece much attention was paid to gymnastics as the chief factor in the education of the child; for according to the Greek method, by acting on the body in a certain way they also worked indirectly on the soul and spirit. But this took place in one way by the Spartans and in a different way by the Athenians. By the Spartans it was above all considered necessary to allow the boys to develop in such a way that through their gymnastic exercises they acquired as far as possible that which worked inwardly on the body, by means of the body alone. Therefore the Spartan boy was urged to do his gymnastic exercises regardless of the weather.

This was different by the Athenians. The Athenians laid great stress on their gymnastic exercises being adapted to the climatic conditions. They were very careful to see that the boy carrying out his gymnastic exercises should be exposed to the sunlight in the right way. To the Spartans it was a matter of indifference whether their exercises were performed in rain or sunshine, but the Athenians demanded that the climatic conditions, especially the sun-effects, should act as a stimulus to them.

The Spartan boy was so treated that his skin was made impermeable, so that everything which he developed in himself might come from the inner corporality. The skin of the Athenian boy was not massaged with sand and oil, but he was exposed to the action of the sun.

That which can come into man from outside, from the effects of the sun thus passed over into the Athenian boys. The Athenian boy was stimulated to be eloquent, to express himself in beautiful words. The Spartan boy, on the other hand, was shut up in himself, by means of all kinds of massage with oil; indeed with massage of the skin with sand and oil he was trained to develop everything in himself independently of external nature. He was thus made to drive back into his inner nature all the forces which human nature can develop, and not to bring them out.

Thus he did not become eloquent like the Athenian boy, but was in this way made to be reticent, to speak very little, to remain quiet. If he said anything it had to be significant. It had to have content. The Spartan speeches, which were but seldom heard, were noted for the weight of their contents. The Athenian speeches were noted for the beauty of their language. All this was connected with the adaptation of man to his environment by means of a corresponding system of education.

You can also see this elsewhere in the relationship brought about between man and his environment. Men from southern regions on whom the external sun-effects work become rich in gesture; they also become talkative. There develops in them a language which has melody because in their development of inner warmth they are connected with the external warmth. Men of northern regions, on the other hand, develop in such a way that they do not become talkative, because they have to retain in themselves their bodily warmth as impulse. Just consider the men of the north. They are known by their silence. They can sit together for whole evenings without feeling impelled to utter many words. One man may ask a question. The other may perhaps answer him with a “no” or “yes” after two hours, or perhaps not till the next evening. That is connected with the fact that these men of the north are obliged to have within them a stronger urge towards the creation of inner warmth, because warmth does not penetrate into them from outside.

Here we have something which may be called the adaptation of man to external conditions of a natural kind. Then observe how all this is active in education and in the general life of soul and spirit. Now just as the Ahrimanic beings have an essential influence on what lies in heredity, so the Luciferic beings have an essential influence on adaptation. Here they can get at man when he is developing his relationship with the outer world. They entangle the human ego in the outer world; and in so doing they often bring this ego into confusion as regards Karma.

Thus whereas the Ahrimanic beings can put man into a state of confusion in reference to his ego as regards his physical impulses the Luciferic beings put him into confusion as regards his Karma; for that which comes from the outer world by no means always lies in Karma, but has first to be woven into a man's Karma by means of many threads and connections so that in the future it may lie in his Karma.

In this way the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic influences are intimately connected with human life and have to be regulated. They must be regulated in the whole evolution of man. For that reason it became necessary for these primeval Teachers of humanity to leave the earth—on which they could not have undertaken this regulation because it cannot be undertaken during man's earthly life, and man, when outside his earthly life is not on the earth—therefore these primeval Teachers of humanity had to withdraw from the earth, and they pursued their further existence on the moon. Here I am obliged to clothe in human speech something for which one really requires quite other word-pictures. After these primeval Teachers of humanity had withdrawn to the moon they had to seek, during their moon-existence, for an arrangement with the Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers. Now the appearance of the Ahrimanic powers would be especially injurious to man in his existence after death if, during that existence, they could exercise their influence on him; for if man goes through the gate of death carrying the after-effects of anything evil in his soul, then, as I have already explained to you he finds himself entirely in an Ahrimanic environment, indeed, he even has an Ahrimanic appearance. He himself has an Ahrimanic physiognomy and he only perceives those human beings who also bear an Ahrimanic physiognomy. That must remain a purely psychic experience of man. If Ahriman could now intervene, if he could now influence the astral body, this would become a force which Ahriman would send into man which would not only balance itself karmically, but which would relate man closely to the earth and bring him into too strong a connection with the earthly. This is what the Ahrimanic powers are striving for. They desire, after death, while man in his spirit-form still resembles his earthly shape, gradually to insert themselves into those human beings in whom it is possible so to do because of the evil impulses which they carry through the gate of death. They wish gradually to permeate this spirit-form in as many such beings as possible with their own forces, to draw it down to earthly existence and to establish an Ahrimanic earth-humanity.

Therefore the primeval wise Teachers of humanity who now inhabit the moon made a contract with the Ahrimanic powers—which had to be entered into by those powers for reasons which I will later explain, according to which they allow the Ahrimanic powers to exercise influence in the fullest sense of the word on the life of man before he descends into earthly existence.

Thus, when man, in his descent into earthly existence, again passes through the moon-sphere, then, according to the agreement made between the wise primeval Teachers of humanity and the Ahrimanic powers, these powers have a definite influence on him. This influence manifests itself in the fact of heredity. As against this, because, through the efforts of the wise primeval Teachers of humanity this sphere of heredity had been allotted to them the Ahrimanic beings renounce what lives in man's evolution after death.

In reverse manner an arrangement was also concluded with the Luciferic beings by which these beings were only to have an influence on man after he has gone through the gate of death, and not before he descends to earthly existence.

Thereby, through the great wise primeval Teachers of humanity there came about a regulating of the influences of the Ahrimanic and Luciferic beings exercised outside the earth. We have already seen and only need to ponder the matter when it at once becomes clear that man is brought under the influence of nature through the Ahrimanic beings being able to work on him. Before his descent to the earth man is exposed to the influences of the impulses of heredity. Through the influences of the Luciferic beings he is exposed to those impulses which lie in his physical environment, in climate and such like, also to the impulses which lie in his psychic, spiritual and social environment through education and so on. Man thus comes into relationship with his natural environment, and into this environment both the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic influences can work.

I should now like to speak from quite another aspect concerning the existence of these Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings in this natural environment. I have already touched on these things in discussing the Michael-problem, but now I will try and make it more clear.

Picture to yourselves the change which takes place in our natural surroundings in the phenomenon of a rising mist. The watery exhalations of the earth rise. We live within the atmosphere which is saturated with this rising of the watery vapours of the earth. One who has developed spiritual vision discovers that something may live in this natural phenomenon which carries the earthly element upwards in a centrifugal direction.

It is not without reason that men who live in the mists are inclined to become melancholic, for there is something in the experiencing of the fog and mist which weighs down our will. We experience a weighing down of our will in mist.

Now by means of certain exercises one can so develop his imagination that he can himself weigh down his own will. He can do this by means of exercises which consist in man’s concentrating inwardly on certain organs of the body, and producing a kind of inner feeling of the muscles (when a person walks and feels his muscles that is different from contracting a muscle through concentration when standing still). When this exercise is regularly practised like the other exercises described in The Way of Initiation he then burdens his will through his own activity. He then begins to see what is present in the rising mist which can make a person morose and melancholy. He then sees, spiritually and psychically, that in the rising mist there, live certain Ahrimanic spirits. He must then say with spiritual cognition: In the rising mist there arise from the earth into cosmic space Ahrimanic spirits who thus extend their existence beyond the earth.

It is again different when, as here in the region of the Goetheanum where the beautiful neighbourhood offers so many opportunities, we turn our gaze evening and morning to the sky, and see the clouds upon which rests the sunlight. A few days ago you could see in the late afternoon a kind of red-golden sunlight incorporated in the clouds which produced the most beautiful forms in a quite wonderful way. The evening of that same day the moon shone with special intensity. But anywhere you may see the clouds with this illumination spread out over them in a wonderful play of colour. This can be seen everywhere; I am simply speaking of something which can be specially beautifully observed here.

In that radiating light which spreads out in the atmosphere over the clouds there live the Luciferic spirits, just as the Ahrimanic spirits live in the rising mist. In fact, for one who can see things of this kind in the right way, consciously, with imagination, allowing his ordinary thoughts to go forth and accompany the forms and colours of the changing clouds, giving play to his thoughts instead of their having sharp outlines, and who is able to change or transform them when the thoughts themselves expand or contract as they go out with these cumuli and accompany their form and colour—then he really begins to regard the play of colour in the clouds, especially in the evening or morning, as a sea of colour in which Luciferic shapes are moving. And whereas, through the rising mist melancholy feelings are aroused in man, it is now that his thoughts and at the same time to a certain extent his feelings learn to breathe as it were in a superhuman freedom on viewing this Luciferic flowing ocean of light. That is a special relationship with his environment which man can cultivate, for he can then really raise himself to the feeling that his thinking is like a breathing in light. Man then feels his thinking, he feels it like a breathing in the light.

If you voluntarily undertake these exercises you will understand better that part of my Mystery Plays where I speak of the Beings who breathe light. Man may even now get a premonition of what such Beings as those light-breathing Beings are, if he undertakes the exercises I have described.

We then discover how the Ahrimanic and Luciferic beings are incorporated into the phenomena of external nature. When we study the phenomena of heredity and of adaptation to environment in the human being we realize that in these man carries his soul and spirit into nature. If we observe phenomena of nature such as the rising mist and the clouds bathed in light we see how the Ahrimanic and Luciferic beings unite themselves with nature. But the approach of the human soul and spirit to nature through heredity and adaptation to environment is also, as I have shown today, only an approach to what is Luciferic and Ahrimanic.

Thus when we look at man's nature we find in it the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic influences; and in those phenomena of nature which hold within them that with which the physicist does not concern himself we again find the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic elements. That is the point from whence we can be led to observe an activity of nature upon man which extends beyond earthly existence.

Let us fix that firmly in our minds today. We find Ahriman and Lucifer in human heredity and in human adaptation to environment. We find Ahriman and Lucifer in the rising mist and in the light which pours down upon the clouds and is retained by them; and we find in man a striving to create rhythm and equilibrium between heredity and adaptation to environment. But we also find in nature outside the striving to create rhythm between the two powers whose existence in nature I have shown, the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic.

If you follow the whole process outside in nature you have a wonderful drama. Observe the rising mist and see how therein the Ahrimanic spirits strive outwards into cosmic space. The moment the rising mist forms itself into clouds, these beings have to give up their efforts and return again to the earth. In the clouds the presumptuous striving of Ahriman finds its limits. In the clouds the mist ceases, and with it the dwelling place of Ahriman; in the cloud the possibility begins for the light to rest upon the cloud—Lucifer resting on the clouds.

Grasp the full significance of this. Picture the rising mist with yellowish-grey Ahrimanic forms building itself into clouds; while in that which is formed in the flowing light above the clouds Luciferic forms are striving downwards, and you have the picture of the Ahrimanic and Luciferic in nature.

You will then understand the times when there was a feeling for what lies on the other side of the Threshold, for that which weaves and lives in the bright clouds, for that which weaves and lives in the mist rolling up; so that in those days painters, for instance, were in a quite different position from what they were later. Then, colour which to them was of a spiritual essence took its right place on the canvas. The poet, then conscious that the Divine, the Spirit spoke in him could say: “Sing, O Muse, of the wrath of Achilles,” or “Sing to me O Muse of the great traveler.” Thus do Homer's poems begin. Klopstock, who lived at a time when the sense for the divine-spiritual was no longer alive, put in its place: “Sing, Immortal soul, of the redemption of sinful men.” I have often spoken of this. Just as poets in olden times could speak thus, so the old painters, even at the time of Raphael or Leonardo could say, because they also felt it in their own way: “Paint for me, O Muse. Paint for me, O Divine Power. Direct my hands for me. Carry my soul into my hands, so that Thou canst guide the brush in my hands.”

It is really a question of understanding this union of man with the spiritual in all the situations of life, and most of all in the most important ones.

So let us keep this clear, that on the one side, in heredity and in adaptation to environment, we bring the human being to Lucifer and Ahriman; whereas, on the other side, in a true understanding of nature, we bring the Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements into external nature. From this viewpoint we will continue our observations in our next lecture.

In the last lecture I spoke to you of the way in which man is subject during his life to that which, from the natural scientific point of view, we are accustomed to call heredity. I spoke further of how man is subject to the influences of the outer world, to adaptation to environment; how everything which is bound up with heredity is connected with the Ahrimanic sphere, while that which, in the widest sense, is comprised in adaptation to the external world is connected with the Luciferic realm. I told you also how in the cosmos, i.e., within the spiritual substance which lies at the foundation of the cosmos care has been taken that the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences should play their part in the right way in human life. We shall add certain things today to what has been said, keeping in mind, at the same time what was explained in the first of these lectures.

We have seen how memory, everything in the nature of memory, fashions man within as regards the soul. In reality, far more than we think we are fashioned as soul-beings by our memories. The way in which our experiences have become memories has really fashioned our souls; we are a result of our memory-life more than we think, and he who can exercise even a little self-observation, so far as to enter into the life of memory will see what a great part the impressions of childhood play throughout the entire earthly life. The manner in which our childhood was spent, which indeed plays no great part in conscious life, the time, for instance, during which we learned to speak and walk, during which we received our first, the inherited teeth, the impressions received during all these periods of development play a great part in the human soul-life throughout the entire life on earth. Many things which rise up inwardly as thoughts which are connected with memories—and everything we grasp in thought that is not caused by external impressions is connected with memories—everything which arises in this way making us inwardly joyful or causing us inner pain (these are generally delicate shades of pleasure and pain which accompany our thoughts when they arise freely) all the life of memory within us is carried out by our astral body when we pass over into the condition of sleep. If now with Imaginative vision we can behold man in sleep as a psychic spiritual being the matter presents itself in the following way. Picture to yourselves during sleep the etheric and physical bodies remaining within the human skin while the astral body is outside (the ego we will consider later). We can then observe the astral body, really consisting in memories. We can also see how these memories which live in the astral body outside of man whirl around in and out of each other. Experiences which lie far asunder in time and in regard to space also are brought together, while some things are left out of certain experiences altogether. In this way the whole memory-life is transformed during sleep. If man dreams it is just because this transformed life of memory appears before his consciousness, and in the constitution of the dream he can inwardly perceive that whirling in and out, inwardly perceive that which, observed from outside can be seen by Imaginative clairvoyance.

But something else presents itself; that which from falling asleep until waking up figures in this way as memories, that which forms the chief content of the human astral soul-life unites during sleep with the forces which lie behind the phenomena of nature. We can therefore say: All that lives as astral body in these memories forms a union with the forces that lie behind the minerals, actually in the inner being of the minerals, in the inner being of the plant forces, and the forces which lie behind the clouds, and so on.

To one who can perceive this truth it is really terrible, I must say, when people say that behind the phenomena of nature there are only material atoms. Not with material atoms do our memories unite during sleep, but with that which really lies behind the phenomena of nature, with the spiritually active forces. It is with these that our memories unite during sleep. Our memories rest in them during sleep.

Thus we can really say: During sleep our soul with its memories dives down into the inner being of nature, and you are saying nothing untrue, nothing unreal if you utter the following: “When I fall asleep I consign my memories to the powers which rule spiritually in the crystal, in plants, in all the phenomena of nature.” You may go for a walk and see by the wayside yellow flowers, blue flowers, green grass and shining promising ears of corn and you can say: “When I pass you by in the daytime I see you from outside, but when I sleep I sink my memories into your spiritual being. You take up what I have transformed during life from experiences into memories. You take up these memories of mine when I go to sleep.” It is perhaps the most beautiful of all feeling for nature to have with the rose-bush not only an external relationship but to be able also to say: “I love the rose-bush especially because the rose-bush has this peculiarity (bear in mind that space plays no part in these things; no matter how far the rose may be removed from us in space we find our way to it in sleep)—the rose-bush has this peculiarity, that it receives the earliest memories of our childhood.” That is the reason why people love roses so much, only they are not aware of it; but they love roses because they are the recipients of the very first memories of childhood.

When we were children other people loved us and often made us smile. We have forgotten it but it forms part of our life of feeling; and the rose-bush absorbs into its own being while we are asleep at night the memories which we have ourselves forgotten. Man is far more united than he realizes with the outer world of nature, that is, with the spirit which rules in the external world. These memories of the first years of childhood are especially remarkable with reference to human sleep, because in reality, during those years and during the years extending to the change of teeth—that means to about the seventh year of life—the soul-element alone is taken up during sleep. As regards human beings it is the case that the spiritual inner part of nature takes into itself of our childhood only the soul part. Other things also of course hold good. The soul-element which we develop during our early childhood (for instance if we were childishly cruel) remains also in us but this is taken up by the thistle. This is said by way of comparison, but nevertheless it actually points to a significant reality. That which is not taken up from the child into the inner part of nature will be immediately evident from what follows.

In the first seven years of life everything has been inherited that is of a bodily nature. The first teeth are entirely inherited; everything of a material nature which we have within us in the first seven years of life is essentially inherited. But after about seven years all the material substance is thrown off; it falls away and is formed anew. Man remains as a form, as a spiritual form, his material part he gradually throws off. After seven or eight years everything that was in his body seven or eight years before has gone. It is a fact that when we have reached the age of nine years our whole human being has been renewed. We then build it in accordance with our external impressions.

As a matter of fact it is extremely important, especially for the child in the first periods of life, that it should be in a position to build its new body—now no longer the inherited body but a body developed out of its inner being—according to good impressions from its environment, and in a healthy adaptation to its environment. Whereas the body which a child has when it comes into the world depends on whether the inherited impulses it has received are good or bad, the later body which it bears from the seventh to fourteenth year depends very much on the impressions it receives from its environment.

Every seven years we build our body anew, but it is our ego that builds it anew. Although the ego is not yet born as regards the outer world in a child of seven years (as you know it is only born later), yet it is working already, for naturally it is bound up with the body, and it is the ego which is building therein. It develops those things of which we have already spoken; it builds up that which appears as the physiognomy, the gestures, the external material revelation of the soul and spirit in man. It is a fact that a human being who has an active interest in the world, who is interested in many things, and because of his active interest in them ponders over them and inwardly digests them, reveals in a material way in the external expression of his countenance and in his gestures what he has been interested in and absorbed. On the face of the human being who has an intensely active interest in the outer world, who inwardly works upon the fruits of this interest in external things one will see in each wrinkle later in life how he formed these himself, and one will be able to read much in his countenance, for the ego is expressed in the gestures and in the physiognomy. A man who goes through the world bored or without interest in the outer world remains throughout his whole life with an unchanged countenance; finer experiences are not imprinted in the physiognomy and gestures. In many a face we may read a whole biography; in many others we cannot read much more than the fact that he was once a child—which is nothing very special.

The fact that man in this way through the changing of his substance every seven or eight years shapes his own outer appearance signifies a great deal. This work of man on his own external appearance, in physiognomy and gesture, is also something which he carries in sleep into the inner being of nature. If one then looks at a man with imaginative clairvoyance and observes the ego outside him as it is during sleep one sees that it really consists in physiognomy and gesture. With those human beings who express much of their inner being in their countenance we find a radiating and shining ego. Now this resulting gesture and physiognomy unites itself also with forces in the inner being of nature. If we have been friendly and kind nature is inclined, as soon as this kindliness has become a facial expression, shown in the countenance, to take this up during our sleep into its own being. Nature takes up our memories into her forces and our gesture-formation into her very essence, into the nature-beings.

Man is so intimately connected with external nature that what he experiences in his inner being as memories is of enormous significance to external nature, as is also the way in which he expresses his inner soul-life in his physiognomy and gestures, for that lives on further in the inner being of nature.

I have often mentioned a saying of Goethe, which was really a criticism of a remark by Haller. Haller said: “Into the inner being of nature no created spirit can enter. Fortunate is the man to whom she reveals even her external husk.” To this, Goethe replied: “You pedant! We are everywhere in the inner being of nature. Nothing is within her, nothing is outside her; that which is within is without, and that which is without is within. Only ask yourself which you are, whether the kernel or the husk.” Goethe says that he heard this remark in the sixties and secretly cursed it; for he felt (naturally he did not then know Spiritual Science) that when one whom he could only regard as a pedant said: “Into the inner being of nature no created spirit can enter,” he knows nothing of the fact that man, simply because he is a being of memories, and a being of physiognomy and gesture is continually entering into the inner being of nature. We are not beings who only stand at the door of nature and knock in vain. Just through that which is our innermost being do we stand in most intimate communion with the inner being of nature.

Because the young child, up to his seventh year, has a body which is entirely inherited, nothing of his ego, of his physiognomy and gesture pass over into the inner being of nature. Only at the change of teeth do we begin to develop our real being. Therefore only after the change of teeth do we gradually become ripe to think about nature. Before that time more important thoughts arise in the child, thoughts which have not much to do with nature, and are so full of charm just for that reason.

The best way to approach a child is to make poetry in its presence, to represent the stars as the eyes of heaven, for example, when things we speak of to the child are as far as possible from external physical reality.

Only from the change of teeth onwards does the child grow in such a way that his thoughts can coincide with the thoughts of nature; fundamentally the whole life from the age of seven to fourteen is such that the child grows in an inward direction, and he then carries his memories outside his soul into nature, as also his gestures and physiognomy, and this then continues throughout his whole life. As regards any relationship with the inner being of nature we, as single human individuals, are only born at the change of teeth. For this reason those beings whom I have designated as elementary spirits, the gnomes and undines, listen so eagerly when man relates something of his child life up to the seventh year, because, as far as these spirits of nature are concerned man is only born at the change of teeth. The change of teeth to them is an extremely interesting phenomenon. Previous to this age man is to the gnomes and undines a being “on the other side,” and it is for them something of an enigma that man appears at this age having already reached a certain perfection! It would be extraordinarily inspiring for pedagogical or educational phantasy if a man, having imbibed spiritual knowledge, could really transpose himself into these dialogues with the nature-spirits, and enter into the soul of the spirits of nature in order to obtain their views concerning what he is able to tell them about children; for in this very way the most beautiful fairy-tales arise. When, in ancient times fairy-tales were so wonderfully apt and rich in content, this is because the poets who composed them could converse with gnomes and undines, could tell them something and not merely hear something from them.

These nature-spirits are often very egoistic, they become silent also if one does not tell them something of that concerning which they are curious. Their favourite stories are about the deeds of babies. In return, one may hear many things from them which can then be woven into the form of fairy-tales.

Thus, for the practical spiritual life that which today appears highly fantastic to us may become extremely important. It is the case that these dialogues with the spirits of nature, on account of the conditions I have mentioned, may be extremely instructive to both sides.

On the other hand, what I have said may in a sense naturally cause anxiety, because while he is asleep man continually creates pictures of his innermost being. Behind the phenomena of nature, behind the flowers of the field, and extending right up into the etheric world there exist reproductions of our memories, both good and useless memories; for the earth is simply teeming with what lives in human souls, and in reality human life is very intimately connected with such things.

We find therefore first of all the spirits of nature, those beings into whom we penetrate with our world of gesture; but we also find the world of the Angels, Archangels and Archai, and grow also into these Beings. We enter into them. We plunge into the deeds of the Angels through our memories. We enter into the living beings of the angelic world through what we have imprinted in ourselves as physiognomy and gesture. This penetration which takes place in sleep is such that we can say: When we pass over livingly into nature the process is that the further we go out in a direct line the more do we come into the regions of the Angels and Archangels and the Archai. We come into the sphere of the third Hierarchy. And when in sleep we dive down with our memories and our gestures as into a flowing sea of weaving beings of Angels, Archangels and Archai, then from one side there comes another stream of spiritual beings, the second Hierarchy, Exusiai, Kyriotetes, Dynamis. If we wish to express in the outer world that which we have just described, we must say: This stream flows in such a way that the course of the sun by day from east to west marks the way the second Hierarchy crosses the third Hierarchy. The third Hierarchy, the Angels, Archangels and Archai, are as if floating up and down “offering one another the golden buckets.” In this presentation we have the second Hierarchy going with the sun, as it were, from east to west. This is not apparent, because here the Copernican world-conception does not hold good, but this stream actually does go from east to west, following the course of the sun during the day.

Thus we see—i.e., if we have the ability to see—how man during sleep grows into the third Hierarchy; but this third Hierarchy is continually being graciously permeated from one side by the second Hierarchy. Thus this second Hierarchy also makes itself felt in the life of our soul.

I pointed out in the last lecture but one the significance of transposing oneself vividly again into the experiences of one's youth. In this connection you can get a very impressive feeling if you take up the Mystery Plays, and there read, perhaps now with greater understanding than was formerly the case, what is represented there in regard to the appearance of the Youth of Johannes. It is indeed the case that man can vivify his own inner nature and make it intensely perceptible to himself if he goes back actively over his youth. I told you how he might take up old school-books from which he might perhaps have learned something (or perhaps not!). He immerses himself in what he learnt, or did not learn. It makes no difference whether one learned anything or not; the point is that one should immerse oneself intensely in what one formerly went through with it. For in this way one may have personal experiences. For instance, it was of immense significance to me personally, a few years ago, to transpose myself into such a situation belonging to my own youth. I then needed to intensify the forces of spiritual understanding. The following events occurred to me quite accidentally when I was just eleven years of age. I was given a school-book. The first thing that happened to it was that I carelessly upset the ink-pot on it and thereby damaged two pages, so that I could no longer read them. That was an event of many years ago, but I have often lived through this event again, this school-book with the damaged pages, with all that I experienced thereby; for this book had to be replaced by a poor family. It was something dreadful, all that one could experience through this school-book, with its gigantic ink smudges. As I said, it is not a question of having behaved well in connection with the circumstance which one recalls; it is rather a question of having experienced them with intensity. If you attempt this with all inner intensity you will also experience something else. You will experience in a true vision a scene which you have inwardly lived through and evoked in the soul. When night has come and everything is dark around you and you are by yourself you will experience the situation as if spread out in space, which you had previously experienced in time. Suppose, for instance, that you evoke before your soul a scene which you once experienced, let us say, at 11 o'clock. Afterwards you went to a place where you sat with and amongst other human beings. You sat down and other people sat around you. Here you have recalled something which you experienced inwardly. What was then around you externally now meets you entirely as a spatial vision. One only needs to look for such connections and then quite important discoveries can be made. Let us say for instance, that when you are seventeen years of age you had your midday meal in a pension where the guests were continually changing. Call up inwardly in your soul one such scene which you experienced. Recall it vividly. Then in the night you find yourself sitting down at the table. Around you people are sitting, people whom you did not often see, because in this pension they continually came and went. In one face you recognize, “That is something I experienced at that time.” External space is added to the soul-experience, when you make your memories active in this way.

This means in reality that you are living with this stream which flows from east to west; because gradually you feel more and more strongly: There in the spiritual world which you enter in sleep your life does not merely consist in being merged with the spiritual, but in this spiritual there transpires something which was reflected externally at the time you sat around the pension table with these human beings. You have forgotten it long ago but it is still there. You behold, it as you can behold those things which can often be seen inscribed in the Akashic Record. The moment you have this before you, you have identified yourself with this stream flowing from east to west, the stream of the second Hierarchy. In this stream of the second Hierarchy something lives which is outwardly reflected by day.

Now days vary in the course of the whole year. In Spring a day is longer, in Autumn shorter; in summer it is longest, in winter shortest. The day is subject to change throughout the year. That is caused by a stream which flows from west to east, counter to the stream from east to west; and that is the stream of the first Hierarchy, of the Seraphim, the Cherubim and the Thrones. Observe therefore how the day changes in the course of the year. If you pass on from the day to the year then you come in contact with what meets you during sleep as the opposite stream. As a matter of fact it is the case that we go forth in sleep into the spiritual world in a direct line, not in the direction which goes from west to east, nor in the direction which goes from east to west.

If we realize this, then, as I have told you, when we vividly recall some memory we must place spatial winter before our souls.

This is also the case when we become conscious of our will. When we become conscious of our will, that is what enters into our gestures and our physiognomy.

That which I am now saying should have a certain significance especially for eurhythmists, although, naturally there is not any intention in Eurhythmy of bringing to expression what I am now about to say. It is a fact that when a man really fashions his external appearance more and more from out of his inner being, when his ego is expressed more and more in his physiognomy and gestures, he not only receives an impression from the day to pass over from vivid inner experiences of memory to the vision of spatial external things. He experiences over again what he learnt, let us say at the age of seventeen, and sees the people with whom he sat in that pension. He sees them in picture-form, as in the Akashic Record. That is Day experience. But one can also experience the year. This is done by paying attention to the way in which the will works in us, and observing that it is relatively easy to bring the will to expression when we are really warm, whereas it is difficult to let the will stream through the body if we are very cold. Anyone who can experience in this way the relation between the will and the fact of being warm or cold will gradually be able to speak of a winter-will and a summer-will.

We find that the best expression of this will comes from the seasons. Let us observe, for example, the will that carries our thoughts out into the cosmos. They escape, as it were, out of the finger-tips, and we feel that it is easy to develop the will.

If we stand before a tree, something at the top of the tree may give us particular pleasure; and if the will becomes warm in us our thoughts are carried to the top of the tree. Indeed they often go even to the stars, if in summer nights we feel endowed with this warm will.

On the other hand, if the will has cooled within us it is as though all our thoughts were carried in our heads, as if they could not penetrate into the arms or legs; everything goes into the head. The head carries this coldness of the will, and if the coldness does not become so severe as to produce a frosty feeling the head becomes warm through its own inner reaction and then develops thoughts.

Thus we can say: summer-will leads us out into the expanses of the universe. Summer-will, warm will carries our thoughts in all directions. Winter-will carries them into our head. We can thus learn to differentiate our will, and then we shall feel that the will which carries us out everywhere into the cosmos is related to the course of summer; while the will which carries the thoughts into our head we feel to be related to the winter. Through the will we come to experience the year in the same way as we formerly did the day.

There is a possibility of feeling as a reality the words which I am now going to write on the board. If a man experiences winter in his human will he can perceive it in such a way that he says:—

O, Cosmic Pictures!
Ye float down to me
From cosmic distances,
Ye strive to reach me,
Ye penetrate into
The thinking forces
Of my head.

These words are not a mere abstraction; for if a man feels his own will united with nature, he can, at the approach of winter feel as if from out of space his own experiences are borne towards him, experiences which he himself had first given to nature. He can perceive on the waves of these words his own experiences which have already passed over into nature.

That is the feeling of the winter-will; but man can also feel the summer-will which expands our thoughts out into the universe:—

Ye creative Soul-forces of my head
Ye fill out mine own being.
Ye press out of my being
Into universal space,
And unite me
With world-creative powers.

That means, the thoughts which are first experienced in the head pass over into the whole body. They first fill the body and then press out of the body again. These words express the nature of the summer-will, the will in us which is related to the summer. We may also say: “I have called up from my inner being the active memory of something experienced long ago; the day with its night confronts me with it in supplementing it with the external perception of space; and that corresponds to the stream from east to west.” We may also say: “In us winter-will changes into summer-will, and summer-will into winter-will.” We are no longer related to the day with its interchange of light and darkness. We are related to the year through our will, and thereby are identified with the stream flowing from west to east, the stream of the first Hierarchy, the Seraphim, Cherubim and the Thrones.

As we go on we shall see how man is hindered or helped through heredity or external adaptation to environment with reference to this relationship with the inner being of nature; for what I have explained to you today relates to the way in which man, if he is hindered as little as possible by the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces, can grow in this way with his thought and will into the inner being of nature, and is received by the time-forces, the day-forces and the year-forces,—the third Hierarchy, the second Hierarchy and the first Hierarchy. But the Ahrimanic forces as they appear in heredity and the Luciferic forces as they appear in adaptation to environment have an essential influence on all this. This great question shall occupy us in the next lecture.

The continuation of the studies we made here on the last occasion leads us today first of all to something which will furnish a preparation for the next two lectures. It leads us to glance at the connection of man, and indeed of the whole man, with our earth. I have often said in various connections that man is subject to a kind of deception if he ascribes to himself a totally separate existence, if he ascribes to himself, as a physical human being, an independent separate existence. He is indeed independent and individual as a psychic and spiritual being; but as physical earth man he belongs to the earth in its organic entirety, and this applies in a certain sense to his etheric body also.

I will describe to you today how this connection of man with earthly existence can appear to super-sensible vision, and I will do so in a more narrative form by way of preparation for the next two lectures. Let us suppose that someone possessing Imaginative consciousness—which I have often described—takes a journey through the primeval Alps, among those rocks and stones which consist chiefly in quartz, i.e. in rocks containing silicates and other similar minerals. When we come into this primeval mountainous region we walk upon the hardest rocks on earth, which, when they appear in their own characteristic form have something virgin in them, one might say, something which is untouched by the ordinary everyday life of earth. We can indeed understand Goethe quite well when, in one of the beautiful utterances we have often quoted here, he speaks of his experience among these primeval mountains. He speaks of the solitude he felt when sitting among these granite mountains receiving impressions from those hard and stern rocks towering up from the earth. Goethe addresses the granite as “the everlasting son of the earth,” the granite which consists in quartz, i.e. in silicates, in mica and in feldspar.

Now when a man approaches these primeval rocks with his ordinary consciousness he may of course admire them from outside. He is struck by their forms, by the perfectly wonderful primitive plastic art which is, however, extraordinarily eloquent. When however, with Imaginative consciousness he approaches these rocks, the hardest on the earth, he penetrates by their means directly into the depths of the mineral kingdom. He is then able to grow together as it were in thought with the rock. One might say that his soul-being extends everywhere down into the depths of the rock, and he actually enters in spirit as into a holy palace of the gods. The inner nature of these rocks reveals itself as permeable to Imaginative cognition, while the outer surfaces appear as the walls of this palace of the gods. But at the same time he has the knowledge that within this rock there lives an inner reflection of all that is in the cosmos. Once more the world of the stars stands before the man’s soul reflected in this hard rock. Finally he receives the impression that in everyone of these quartz rocks something is present like an eye of the earth itself for the whole cosmos.

One is reminded of the eyes of insects, those many-faceted eyes which divide all that approaches them from outside into very many separate parts. One would like to imagine, and indeed one cannot help doing so, that there are countless quartz and similar formations on the surface of the earth that are just so many eyes of the earth, in order that the cosmic environment may be reflected and the earth can inwardly perceive it. Gradually one acquires the knowledge that each crystal form existing within the earth is a cosmic sense-organ of the earth.

This is the marvelous, the majestic fact about the covering of snow, and even more about the falling snow-flakes, that in each single one of these snow-flakes there is a reflection of a great part of the cosmos, that with this crystallized water everywhere reflections fall to the earth of parts of the starry heavens.

I need not mention that the stars are also there during the day only that the sunlight is of course too strong for us to perceive them. The stars do not appear by day, but if you have at any time the opportunity of going down into a deep cellar over which there is a tower open at the top, then, because you are looking out of the darkness and the sunlight does not confuse you, you can see the stars even by day. There is a certain tower in Jena, for instance, from which one can see the stars during the day. I only mention this by the way to make clear to you that this reflection of the stars in the snowflakes and generally in all crystals is of course present also during the day. And it is not a physical but a spiritual reflection. The impression one receives of this must be communicated inwardly.

But this is not all. Out of the spiritual sense-impression which is thus received there arises in the soul the feeling that just as we live imaginatively into the crystal covering of the earth so do we grow together with everything which the earth experiences of the cosmos in this crystal covering.

In this way we extend our own being out into the cosmos. We feel ourselves one with the cosmos. And above all else it now becomes a truth, a deep truth to the imaginative observer, that what we call our earth-body with all its various parts was once in the course of time born out of the cosmos; for the relationship of the earth with the cosmos then appears most intensely before the eyes of the soul. Thus, through this experience of living ourselves into the millions of crystal eyes of the earth we are prepared to feel the whole inner relationship of the earth with the cosmos, to experience it in the Feeling-Soul.

Thereby, however, we feel ourselves as Man once again united with the earth—I shall explain this point specially later on. For this process of the earth being born out of the cosmos took place when Man himself was still a primitive being, not a physical but a spiritual being. But the process which the earth then went through after it had been born out of the cosmos Man himself went through in his own being together with the earth. It is really the case that the earth once upon a time had the same inner relationship with the neighbouring cosmos surrounding it as the human embryo has to the body of its mother before it is born. Later, however, the child begins to be independent. Similarly the earth itself developed independence, whereas in the first Saturn period it was more united with the cosmos. This process of becoming independent was shared by man in such a way that he has learnt to say: The finger which I carry about on me is a finger only as long as it is a part of my organism; the moment I cut it off from my organism it is no longer a finger, it decays. In the same way, if we think of man as a physical being separated by a few miles from the body of the earth he would decay just as a finger does if it is cut off from the man's body. The delusion of man that as a physical being he is independent of the earth arises only from the fact that he can move about freely on the surface of the earth, whereas the finger cannot move about on the rest of his organism. If the finger could walk about on the rest of the body it would have the same delusion concerning man as he, as a physical being, has concerning the earth. It is just through the higher cognition that the intimate belonging-together of the physical man with the earth is made clear.

That is the first acquaintance which man makes by means of Imaginative cognition when it is applied to the hardest part of the earth's surface.

We can make further progress in this knowledge if we go somewhat deeper into the earth and learn to know all that is in the interior of the earth, in veins or lodes of metal, or anything of a metallic nature generally. Here we penetrate under the surface of the earth; but here, when we meet what is metallic we come to something quite special, to an existence separate from the rest of the earth. Metals have something of an independent nature in them, they can be experienced as something independent; and this experience has much, very much to do with man.

Even one who has already attained a certain higher knowledge by Imaginative vision is not yet quite at home when he experiences the quartz and other rocks of the primeval mountains in such a way that by becoming one with the million eyes of the earth he himself lives, feels and projects himself in experience into the whole cosmos. When, however, such a man approaches the interior of the earth there come to him the first impulses which accompany such a wonderful and deep experience as he may have in the stimulus to be had in a mine. Once, however, these impulses have come to him he only requires spiritual vision to be able everywhere to enter into relationship with that which is metallic, even if he does not go down into the borings of the mine.

But the first feeling of which I am speaking may be acquired with special intensity in metal mines. Even metal miners (though this is not so much the case as it was a few decades ago) who have inwardly grown up with their calling show something of what we may call a deep sense of the spiritual element in metals; for the metals not only perceive the environment of the cosmos but they speak, they speak spiritually. They relate things, they speak to us. And they speak in such a way that this language which they utter is very like that which one receives as an impression in another domain also.

When we succeed in setting up a psychic connection with human beings who are going through the development between death and re-birth (I have often mentioned this point before) we require for this a special language. The utterances of spiritualists are indeed childish in this domain for the reason that the dead do not speak the language of earthly man. Spiritualists believe that the dead speak in such a way that one can write down what they say, just as one may receive a letter from a contemporary, living here on the earth. For the most part it is high-flown matter that comes from spiritualist sittings, but even among our living contemporaries on the earth high-flown things are also written. But that is not the question here. The first necessity is to find the right approach to the language which the dead speak, which has no resemblance to any language on earth. It certainly has a vocal-consonantal character but not like that of earthly speech. This language which can only be perceived by the spiritual ears is spoken also by the metals in the interior of the earth. And this language through which man can approach those souls who are living between death and re-birth relates to us the memories of the earth, the things that the earth has experienced in its passage through Saturn, Sun and Moon. We must let the metals relate to us what were the experiences of the earth. The experiences of the whole planetary system (I have already spoken of this) are told us by that which Saturn has to communicate to the planetary cosmic system in which we live. What the earth has undergone in the process, of this the metals of the earth speak.

The language spoken by the metals of the earth can assume two different forms. When this language has the ordinary form, so to speak, there appears before us what the earth has gone through in its evolution beginning in the Saturn period. What you find in my Outline of Occult Science regarding this evolution originated for the most part, in the way I have often described, through direct spiritual perception of the events. That is a mode of acquiring knowledge of these earth processes which is somewhat different from the mode to which I am now referring. For the metals speak more—if I may express myself thus; it is of course somewhat oddly expressed—the metals speak more of the personal experiences of the earth. They speak of what the earth has experienced as a cosmic personality. Thus, if I were to take into account the narratives of the metals, to which one can listen by penetrating spiritually into the inner part of the earth, I should have to add many details to what I have written about the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods, etc.

The first thing, for example, would be that those forms of Saturn which you will find described in my Outline of Occult Science as forms which consist in differentiations of heat would appear as powerful gigantic beings consisting in heat; beings of heat who, even as early as the ancient Saturn period, had reached a certain density. If such a thing could be (of course it is impossible, but let us suppose it could happen) that an earthly man were to meet these beings, he could become aware of them, he would be able to lay hold of them. At a certain time, about the middle of this Saturn period these beings were not merely spiritual beings but they also displayed a physical existence; if a man had touched them he would have been blistered. It would however, be a mistake to suppose that these beings had a temperature of millions of degrees of heat. That is not the case, but they had inwardly such a temperature that if one could have grasped them the contact would have caused blisters.

As regards the Sun period we should have to relate how in these formations described in my Occult Science as present in the Sun period other beings appear, displaying wonderful transformations, wonderful metamorphoses. From gazing at, from observing these self-transforming beings one receives the impression, for instance, that the metamorphoses described by classical authors such as Ovid have something to do with these communications imparted to us, naturally indirectly, by the metals. Ovid was certainly not himself capable of directly understanding the language of the metals, and what he describes in his Metamorphoses does not perfectly correspond with the impression which one receives; but in a certain sense the correspondence is conveyed.

Paracelsus again was a personality who lived much later than those to whom I have just referred. The most important things Paracelsus wanted to learn he did not learn at the University. I cannot say that Paracelsus did not attend the University, for he did, and I will not bring forward any objections against going to the University, but Paracelsus did not go there to learn the most important things he wanted to know. He went everywhere where men could tell him more important things; he went to such men as metal-miners, for instance, and in this way he acquired a great part of his knowledge.

Now anyone acquainted with the right way of gaining knowledge for oneself knows how extremely illuminating for instance, the simple remarks of a farmer may be, a man who has to do sowing and reaping and all that is connected with work of that kind. You will say, yes, but he does not understand the import of what he is saying. It does not matter to you whether the speaker understands or not, so long as you yourself understand when you listen to him. That is the important thing. Certainly in very few cases will the man himself understand what he says; he speaks from instinct. And even more fundamental things can be experienced in the case of those beings who understand nothing of what they say to us—from the beetles and butterflies, from the birds, and so on.

What could be learned in the mines in Asia Minor through the language of the metals was studied very deeply by Pythagoras, for example, on his wanderings, and from thence much penetrated into what became the Greek and Roman civilization. Then it appears in weakened form in such writings as Ovid's Metamorphoses. That then is one form of the language of the metals in the interior of the earth.

The other form—grotesque as it sounds, it is nevertheless true—the other form is that in which this speech of the metals begins to develop cosmic poesy, when it passes over into poetic form. There actually appears in the language of the metals cosmic fantasy. Then there resounds out of this cosmic poetry that which constitutes the most intimate relations between the metals and man. Such intimate relations between man and metals indeed exist. The coarse relationships of which physiology is aware relate only to a few metals. It is known, for instance, that iron plays a great part in human blood; but iron is the only metal of this kind that does this. A certain number of other metals such as potassium, calcium, sodium, magnesium, also play a certain role, but a larger number of important metals, important for the structure and functioning of the earth, apparently play no part in the human organism, according to coarse external observation. But this is only apparently the case. When we go down into the earth and there learn to know the colour of the metals we also learn that metals are by no means confined to the interior of the earth, but are everywhere in the surroundings of the earth, though certainly in an exceedingly diluted form—I must here use the expression—in a super-homeopathic dilution they are distributed everywhere in the environment of the earth.

Roughly speaking, we can have no lead in us, but speaking more accurately, we cannot exist without lead. What would become of man if lead did not work upon him from the cosmos, from the atmosphere; if in an infinitely finely divided state lead itself did not penetrate through his eye with the nerve-sense ray; if lead did not penetrate into the body through the breathing and in an endlessly finely-divided state enter into us through food? What would man be if lead did not work in him?

Man would indeed have sense-perceptions without lead. He would perceive colours, he would perceive sounds; but in his perceptions of colours and sounds it would be as if, with every perception he became slightly unconscious. He would never be able to withdraw from his perceptions and reflect in thought, or form concepts of what he had perceived. If we did not take lead, as I have said, in super-homeopathic dilution into our nervous system and most of all into our brain we should be given up entirely to our sense-perceptions as to something outside of us. We should not be able to think about our sense-perceptions, nor should we be able to preserve the memory of them. This capacity is given us by the finely divided lead in our brain.

If lead be introduced into the human body in large quantities it results in the terrible lead-poisoning. But he who knows the connection can see from this lead-poisoning that, while lead when introduced into man's body in large quantities works excessive harm, in this fine super-homeopathic dilution it is something which causes as much to die off in man each moment as is necessary in order that he may become a conscious being, and not suffer unconsciousness through continual sprouting, budding, growing. For in sprouting and budding, in the over pressure of the pure forces of growth man becomes powerless.

It is thus that man is connected with all the metals, even with those concerning which our coarse physiology does not speak. The knowledge of these connections is the basis for a positive genuine true therapy; but instruction concerning these connections between the metals and man can only be given in that language which is the poetic speech of the metals in the earth. Thus it may be said that concerning the past experiences of the earth itself the ordinary language of the metals instructs man; but the metals instruct man concerning their curative properties when they become poetic, when their language becomes poetry.

This is indeed a noteworthy connection. From the cosmic aspect, medicine is cosmic poetry; indicating how many secrets of the world are contained in the fact that something which on one niveau of the world is harmful and brings about disease, on another niveau is most beneficent, most perfect, most beautiful. This is shown us when Inspired cognition penetrates to the veins of metal in the earth, and to all that is metallic in the earth.

We may enter into another relationship with the metals, that relationship which becomes apparent when they are subjected to the forces of nature, for instance, to, fire or similar natural forces. Observe the remarkable form assumed in the earth by antimony, a metal. It is composed of single spikes, which shows that when it is being formed it follows certain directions of force which are operative in the cosmos. This grey antimony has also the property that if it is heated and spread on glass it forms a mirror. Antimony has also other characteristics, for instance, that of exploding if it is treated electrically in a certain way and then brought to the cathode (the negative pole).

All these characteristics of antimony show the relation of such a metallic substance to the forces of the earth and its environment. This however, can be noticed in the case of all metals. We can observe all metals when they are subjected to fire, and we see how, if ever a higher temperature is developed they pass over into that super-homeopathic condition and at this high temperature take quite a different form. In this respect the ideas of our modern physicists are the most limited one can imagine. For example, they imagine that when they melt lead it becomes softer and softer, and of course that is quite correct as far as it goes. It does become softer as the temperature grows higher; the lead becomes hotter and hotter. It becomes more fluid until it gives off lead fumes. But all the time something is being thrown off that does not go beyond a certain temperature. This they do not know. It is just this finest, this super-homeopathic part of the lead which passes over continually into what I may call universal invisible life, and this is something which acts upon man.

The matter may be presented thus. In the earth down below you have the various metals, but these metals exist also in a finely-divided state everywhere above. I might say that these metals vapourize. Down below in the earth we have the metals with their sharp contours, with their rigid forms, and still further down they would certainly be in a fiery fluid condition. But in the environment of the earth they exist in this finely-divided state; there they reveal themselves in continual radiations so that a constant radiation goes out into the cosmos. The metals ray forth into space; but there is a certain elasticity in this cosmic space, and the forces which go forth in this way do not radiate without limit into space as the physicists imagine to be the case with light rays. They proceed to a certain boundary and then return. One can observe this radiating back of the metals returning in all directions from the periphery of the cosmos as if they came from everywhere. One notices that these back-raying forces are active in that sphere of human life which is really the most wonderful and beautiful, that is, when, in the first years of its life a child learns to walk, speak, and think. The way in which a child raises itself from the crawling position to get its bearings in the world is really the most wonderful thing we can observe in earthly life—this realization of itself as a human being. Inwardly, in these forces which I have so often described work the backward-raying forces of the metals. While the child learns to raise itself upright from its horizontal crawling position it is permeated by these metallic forces which are being reflected back. It is these forces which really raise the child up. If one can inwardly perceive and understand this connection, then at the same time one has another experience. One learns in his actions and in his being the connection of man as he lives here on the earth with his former earth lives.

It requires the same capacity to perceive the workings of metals in the cosmos as it does to perceive the karmic connection of successive earth lives. These capacities are the same, the one arises with the other, and the one does not exist without the other. For this reason I said in a different connection that in the power of orientation, in the raising itself of the child from crawling to standing upright and walking, in learning to speak and in learning to think lies that which comes over from former earthly lives. Anyone who has a feeling for these things can see in the way a child makes its first steps, in the way it walks, whether it has the inclination to press more on the toes or the heel, whether it bends the knees more or less strongly—in all this anyone who has an eye for these things can see a karmic tendency from a former earth life. This reveals itself primarily in the gait and it can now be perceived because the capacity to see the backward-raying forces of the metals and the power to observe the connection of man with his former earth lives belong together.

When people say Anthroposophy cannot be proved that assertion is really without foundation. People are accustomed to prove things in such a way that sense perception is always brought forward as proof. That is just as if someone were to say: If you tell me that the earth moves in cosmic space without support that is impossible; the earth must have something to rest on, otherwise it would fall. Now cosmic bodies do mutually support one another, and only with regard to things of the earth can one say that everything must have something to rest on. For the truths which concern everyday consciousness we demand proofs. The truths which relate to the spirit mutually support one another. But one must be able to trace this mutual support.

Some weeks ago I told you how, by observing the way a child or a man walks—whether he first raises his toes or his heel, whether he treads lightly or firmly, whether he bends the knees or holds them stiffly, etc.—that in all these things one can see the realization of his karma as the result of his former earth life. Today I have shown you how the reflected forces of the metals enable one to recognize how the several lives on earth are connected together.

Here we perceive two truths that mutually support each other. It is always the case that we must first hear a truth, then other things intervene, and then we hear the same truth again from a different point of view, then perhaps a third time. Thus do the truths of Anthroposophy support one another, as the heavenly bodies in the cosmos uphold and support each other. This must be so when we ascend from the truths which are valid for ordinary consciousness to those truths which are self-subsisting in the cosmos. And self-subsisting in the cosmos is that Which is to be grasped through the knowledge given by Anthroposophy.

So we must really bring together all the truths which have been given out at different times, truths which really support one another, attract one another, and sometimes also repel one another, in this way showing the inner life of anthroposophical knowledge; for anthroposophical knowledge lives on its own inspiration. Other systems which obtain today depend upon the supports on which they rest, but anthroposophical knowledge is self-supporting.

Through that which I gave you in my last lecture it is now possible to speak more exactly of many of those events which occurred in the course of the evolution of the earth, and which have brought about its present form. You will remember I said that one who has attained to knowledge through inner vision comes into a certain relationship with the metals of the earth, with all that has its being in the earth, through the fact that the earth is permeated with veins of metal, that the earth in general carries within itself various kinds of metals. This relationship into which man can enter with the metals enables him to look back on that which has happened to the earth.

It is particularly interesting to look back to what happened on the earth in the times preceding the Atlantean evolution, that period which I have described in a somewhat external way, as the Lemurian epoch; to look back also to the period of time which immediately preceded this, when the Earth went through the Sun stage. During the Lemurian epoch the Earth went through the Moon stage. It is interesting to look back on all these events, for we thereby receive an impression of how wonderful is everything in the sphere of earthly existence.

Nowadays we are accustomed to regard the earth as complete in the form which it presents to us today. We live on the continents as human beings, and are surrounded by what the earth bears upon it in the way of plants, animals, birds of the air, and so on. We know that we ourselves live, in a certain sense, in a sort of air-ocean, the atmosphere which surrounds the earth, that out of this atmosphere we take oxygen into ourselves, that our relation to the nitrogen also plays a certain role. We picture to ourselves in general that this atmosphere, consisting in oxygen and nitrogen, surrounds us. Then we look upon the oceans, the seas—I need not go into every detail—and we form a picture of the planet which we inhabit in the universe.

The earth was not always as it is today; it has undergone tremendous changes. If we go back to the times I have just indicated, to the Lemurian age and a little further back we find quite a different condition of the earth from what we have today.

Let us begin with the atmosphere in which we now live, and which we regard as non-living, lifeless; even this atmosphere shows itself in those early ages as something quite different. If we go still further back we have to observe something else. Today, we have this firm solid earth-kernel and around it the atmosphere. A similar mental picture might also be made even for those very ancient times, but there could be no question of there being round the earth anything like the air we now breathe. In the air we breathe today oxygen and nitrogen play the chief part, carbon and hydrogen play a less important part, and sulphur and phosphorous a still less significant one.

As regards those very ancient times it is really not possible to speak of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, sulphur and so on, simply because what the chemist calls by these names today did not exist in this ancient period. If a chemist of today were to meet a spiritual being of that time and speak of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, etc., that being would reply “such things do not exist.” It is possible to speak today of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, etc., but in those ancient times there was absolutely no possibility of speaking of these things for they could only be present as such after the earth had reached a certain density and had acquired forces such as it has within it today. Oxygen, nitrogen, potassium, sodium and so on, all the lighter so-called metals simply did not exist in that ancient epoch. On the other hand there was at that time around the earth, in the place where today we have the atmosphere something which was of an exceedingly fine fluid nature, of a consistency halfway between our present air and water. It was of a fluid nature, but in its fluidity it was similar to albumen; so that in reality the earth at that time was entirely surrounded by an albuminous atmosphere. The albumen in eggs today is very much denser, but it may be compared with that of which we are now speaking.

From this environment of the earth when later the earth become denser, what we now call carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and so on were gradually differentiated. They were not there in such a way that we can say this ancient albuminous atmosphere was composed of these elements, for it did not have these several elements as ingredients. Today we generally think of things as being formed by combination, but that is nonsense. What we know as certain higher substances are not always composed of what appears when they are analysed, for these things cease to be present in the higher substance. Carbon is not present there as carbon, nor oxygen as oxygen, but there is a substance of a higher nature. As I have said, this substance according to its qualities may really be described as albumen in an excessively fluid condition. The whole of this substance surrounding the earth at that time was permeated from the universe with cosmic ether, which gave it life. So that we have to represent to ourselves the cosmic ether as projecting into this substance and giving it life.

This substance lived because the cosmic ether projected itself into it. Not only was it alive, it was also differentiated in a remarkable manner, e.g. in one part there appears a large structure in which man would be suffocated, in another part another large structure appears in which man could specially have regained new life and activity if he could have been there at that time as a human being, and so forth. Formations arose, producing effects which remind one of the chemical elements of today, but chemical elements in our modern sense did not exist. Then the whole was pervaded by reflections of light, gleams of light, rays of light, sparkles of light. And finally the whole was warmed through by the cosmic ether.

Such were the characteristics at that early period of the earth's atmosphere. The first thing to be fashioned from out of the cosmos is what I described in the last lecture as the very first primeval mountains. These were fashioned from out of the cosmos. Thus the quartz that is found out there in the primeval mountains in its beautiful form, in its relative transparency, was formed in the earth to a certain extent from out of the universe. That is why, today, if we transfer ourselves through Imaginative vision into these rocks of the primeval mountains into what are now the hardest formations of the earth they are to us as the eyes of the earth through which it gazes out into the universe. But also it was the universe which implanted these eyes in the earth. They are there now. The universe has placed them in the earth. The quartz, the silica and such like which then permeated the whole atmosphere and were gradually deposited as primeval mountains were not so hard as today. This only came afterwards, this hardened state through circumstances which developed later. All that was thus fashioned out of the cosmos in that far-off time was scarcely harder than wax.

If you go now into those mountainous regions and there see a quartz crystal, it is so hard that, as I have said before, if you were to knock your head against it your skull would crack but not the quartz. At that far-off time, however, because of the life which pervaded everything the quartz was actually as soft as wax. We may, therefore, say that these rocks of the primeval mountains came out of the cosmos as a kind of trickling wax.

All that thus slipped into the earth from out of the cosmos was transparent, and its relative hardness, its wax-like hardness can only be described by mentally employing the sense of touch. If we could have grasped it, it would have felt like wax.

It was in this way that these ancient mountains were deposited from out of the cosmos as a kind of wax-substance trickling in and then gradually hardening. Silica had a wax-like consistency at the time in which it was deposited out of the cosmos into the earth.

That which today is present more spiritually and which I described in the last lecture, viz. that by transposing oneself into this hard rock one has pictures of the cosmos—this phenomenon was at that time quite perceptible spiritually, and in such a way that when such silicates in the wax-like condition began to condense one could distinguish in them something like a kind of plant-form. Anyone who has looked round a little on nature knows quite well that something like distinctive marks of an ancient time are to be found. in the mineral world today. We find stones, we take them in our hands, we look attentively at them, and we find they have within them something like the outline of a plant-form. At that time it was quite a usual phenomenon which came into this albuminous atmosphere, pushed in as it were as outlines which could not only be seen but which were substantially photographed in this wax-like body.

Then the peculiar configuration came about that the fluid albumen which existed in the atmosphere filled in these outline forms and thereby they became somewhat harder, somewhat denser. Then they were no longer merely outline forms. The silicious part fell away from them and was dispersed in the rest of the atmosphere. In the earliest part of the Lemurian epoch we have those gigantic floating plant-formations reminding us somewhat of the forms of the algae of today, which are not rooted in the soil, for as yet there was no soil there. They floated in this fluid albumen with which they were permeated and out of which they formed their own substance. Not only did they float in this fluid albumen, they also shone forth I might say, they lit up and then faded away. They were capable of transformation to the extent that they could arise and disappear.

Place this picture clearly before your minds. It is a picture which is indeed very different from anything around us today. If we as modern men could transpose ourselves into that ancient epoch, if, let us say, we could set up a little sentry box somewhere and watch what happened around, if from it we could look out into that ancient world we should see all round us, over there a plant-form shoots up, a tremendous plant-form, like our present algae (sea-weed) or even like a palm. But it shoots up. It does not grow out of the earth in spring and die down in autumn; it shoots up, appearing in the spring-time (the spring-time was much shorter then) and reaches a tremendous size. Then it disappears again into the fluid albumen-like element. Such an observer would see green ever appearing and then fading away. He would not speak of plants covering the earth but of plants which like air-clouds appear from out of the cosmos, become dense and then dissolve away, something which grows green in this element of albumen. Then in the time which would somewhat correspond to our summertime today he would say: This is the time when the environment of our earth grows green. But he would have to look up to the green rather than look down on it.

In this way the idea comes to us how the flinty part of the earth atmosphere draws down into the earth, and how the plant-force which is really out there in the cosmos attracts it up to itself, how the plant-world comes down to the earth from out of the cosmos. In the period of which I am now speaking we have to say: This plant-world is something which arises and passes away in the atmosphere.

Something else must also be said. If today as human beings we transfer ourselves through this relationship with the metallic elements of the earth back into those ancient times we feel as if all this belonged to ourselves, as if we had something to do with that which at that time within the atmosphere grew green and then faded away. When today we recall our own childhood our memory extends over a relatively short span of time. Yet just as we can recall a pain which we experienced in childhood—and that is something which belongs to us—in the same way in this cosmic recollection aroused by the metallic element of the earth we experience this process of the becoming green and fading away as something which belongs to us. Man was already at that time connected with the earth, that earth which lived in this watery albuminous atmosphere. He was united with it as a human being but in such a way that as man he was still wholly spiritual. We express a reality when we say: Man must acquire the concept that these plants which we see there in the atmosphere at that time are something separated, something thrown off from that which is human. Man puts this out of his own being which itself is still united with the whole earth. And he has this conception, or should have it, of something else that he places outside of him, something quite different. The following also happened. Everything I have hitherto described was brought about through the silica substance in the atmosphere having been already deposited in the wax-like substance of which I have spoken. But apart from that, this albuminous atmosphere extends everywhere. Upon this atmosphere the cosmos works. Upon this atmosphere there work the countless manifold forces which stream down to the earth from the cosmos everywhere, those forces of which our modern science has no wish to know anything. Hence our modern science is indeed no true knowledge, for the most various phenomena which occur on the earth would indeed not occur if they were not brought about by cosmic impulses and cosmic forces.

Because the learned men of today do not speak of these cosmic forces they do not speak of what above all things is reality. They take nowhere into account that which is really living. Even in the smallest particle which we look at under the microscope there live not only earthly but cosmic forces, and if this is not taken into account there is no reality.

Thus were the cosmic forces active at that time upon this fluid albumen in the environment of the earth. These cosmic forces worked on many parts of this albumen in such a way that they congealed, so that one could see everywhere albumen congealed by the forces of the cosmos; this cosmically congealed albumen swam in the earth environment. These forms of cosmically congealed albumen were not merely imaginary masses of clouds, they were living things having definite forms. These were actually animals which consisted in this congealed albumen thickened to the density of jelly or even to that of our present-day gristle. Such jelly-like animals existed in this fluid albuminous atmosphere. They had a shape which we find today on a smaller scale in our reptiles, in lizards and creatures of that kind; they were not so dense as these are, but they had gelatinous bodies and the power of movement. At one moment they had long limbs, at another these limbs were drawn back into the body. In short, everything about these limbs is like a snail which can extend and withdraw its feelers.

While all this was being formed outside something else was being deposited in the earth from out of the cosmos, another substance in addition to the silica, and that is what you find today as the chalk or limestone of the earth. If you go into the primeval mountains, or merely into the Jura mountains, you find this limestone rock. This limestone rock certainly came to the earth later but it came in the same way as the silica out of the cosmos on to the earth. Thus we find chalk as the second substance in the earth.

This chalk continually oozes in and the essential thing is that it works in such a way that the kernel of the earth gradually becomes denser and denser. In certain localities the silica incorporates itself into the chalk. But the chalk retains the cosmic forces. Chalk indeed is something quite different from the coarse material which the chemists of today represent it to be. It contains formative forces, relatively active though unrecognized.

Now we come to a peculiar thing. If we consider a somewhat later time than that which I have described in connection with the phenomenon of the arising and passing away of the green, we find that in this albuminous atmosphere there is a continual rising and falling of chalky substance. Chalk-mist is formed and then chalk-rain. There was a period on the earth when the water which today rises in mist and falls as rain was of a chalk nature which rose and fell, ascending and descending. Now the peculiar thing comes about that this chalk is specially attracted by the gelatinous, the gristly forms; it permeates them, impregnates them with itself. And through the earth forces which are in it (I told you the earth-forces are in the chalk) through these forces the whole gelatinous mass is gradually dissolved, the mass which, as we have seen, formed itself there as coagulated albumen. The chalk abstracts the albumen and carries it down nearer to the earth, and from this gradually arise the animals which have bones containing lime. That is what develops in the later part of the Lemurian epoch.

We have, therefore, first of all to look upon the plants in their most ancient form as pure gifts from heaven. In the animals, in everything possessing an animal form we have to see something which the earth, after the heavens had given it chalk, took and made into an earthly form. These are the marvelous things which we discover in those ancient times. We feel so bound up with these things that we feel this whole process as an expansion of the human being into the cosmos.

Such things naturally sound paradoxical because they touch upon a reality of which the man of the present day usually has no idea; nevertheless they are absolutely true. Does it not correspond with reality today when someone says from what he remembers: “When I was a child of nine years old I had a friend whom I fought or hurt?” That recollection is something which arises from within. The speaker may feel pleasure in it or not. It may cause him pain, but it arises within him. Similarly there arises in man through the relationship with the metals an enhanced human consciousness which becomes an earth consciousness: Whilst thou hast formed on the earth thy whole being from out of the heavens, by the descent thou hast separated the plants from thee. They are cast off from thee. Thou hast also cast off the animal nature. In the form of coagulated jelly or gristle thou didst will first of all that the animal nature should become a separate product from thyself. But in this case thou hast had to see how earlier earth forces have taken this work from thee and have fashioned the animal forms into another shape, which is a result of earth creation. In this way, in, a cosmic memory, one can see this as one's own experience just as one can see the case I have just given you as an experience of a short earthly life. One feels oneself, as has been said, united as a human being with all these things.

But all this is indeed connected with many other processes. I can only sketch for you the chief events. Many other things happened. For example, while all that I have described was taking place the whole atmosphere was filled with sulphur in a finely divided state. This finely divided sulphur united itself with other substances, and from the union there arose what I may call the parents of everything which is found today in the ores as pyrites, galena, native sulphide of zinc, etc. In this way all these substances developed in an older form, soft, thick and wax-like. The body of the earth was permeated with these things.

When these ores, these metallic substances developed out of the general albuminous substance and formed the solid crust of the earth the metals had really not much else to do, unless man made some use of them, than to ponder over what had happened in the past. We find them still doing this, bringing graphically to the mind of one who has inner vision all that has happened to the earth. Now because he has, as his own, this cosmic or at least tellurian experience he says: Through having cast off from thyself all this, through having cast off the primeval plant-form, a form which has since developed into the later plant-forms, through having cast off that which still exists in a more complicated way as the animal creation as I have described it, thou hast separated from thyself that which formerly hindered thee from having as man a will of thine own.

All that I have described to you was necessary. Man had to cast off these things from himself, just as today he has to get rid of perspiration and other matter. Man had to cast off these things so that he might no longer be a being in whom merely the gods willed, but so that he could be a being with a will of his own, certainly not yet a free will, but his own. All this was necessary as preparation for the earthly nature of man.

Through much else that happened everything gradually became transformed. As the metals were now within the earth the whole atmosphere changed also. It became a different atmosphere, much less sulphurous. Oxygen gradually gained the upper hand over the sulphur, whereas in the ancient times sulphur was of very great significance for the atmosphere of the earth. The whole atmosphere of the earth became transformed.

In this transformed atmosphere man could again cast off from himself something else. What man now separated off appeared as the successors of the earlier plants and earlier animals.

Gradually the later plant-forms developed. These had a kind of root by which they held on to a still extremely soft earthy substance. And there arose reptiles, lizard-like animals, more complicated creatures, impressions of which present-day geology can still discover. Of the most ancient creatures of which I have spoken nothing can be found. Only in that later period, when man for the second time separated off from himself more complicated forms, only then were there such creatures as I have been describing to you. First of all cloud-like structures, continually arising and disappearing, growing green and then fading away; soft animal-like forms which were really animals, forms which gradually consolidated themselves, had a life of their own and then disappeared into the common earth-life. This was the case with all these beings. And out of all this arose something which condensed more into itself.

Among these animals was one which may be described as follows: it had a very large eye-like organ surrounded by a sort of aura. Near it was a kind of snout, which besides was elongated forward, then something like a lizard's body, but with powerful fins. Such a form as this arose, which now developed more firmness within itself. Animals arose possessed of what I may just as well call wings as fins, because these animals were not marine creatures, for there was no sea as yet, there was a soft earthy mass and the still soft element of the surroundings from which only the sulphur had been partly removed. In these surroundings such an animal flew or swam, it was an activity between flying and swimming.

Besides these there were other animals which did not have this kind of limbs. They had limbs which already were formed more out of the forces of the earth itself, and which remind us too of the limbs of the lower mammals of today.

Thus if starting from today we could wander back through time rather than through space into that period which unites the Lemurian epoch with that of Atlantis, a peculiar prospect would face us. We should see these gigantic flying lizards, with a sort of lantern on their heads which shines and also gives warmth. Down below is the soft morass-like earth which has something extremely familiar about it, because it offers to the visitors of today a kind of odour, something between a musty smell and the smell arising from green plants, something between the two. Something seductive on the one hand and extremely sympathetic on the other would be offered by the mud of the soft earth. In this morass too we find moving about as swamp-animals creatures which already have limbs more like those of our present lower animals, but spread out below them, something like the webbed feet of a duck but of course very much bigger. With these “shovels” they propel themselves in the swamp, and also rock about from side to side.

Man had to go through all this casting-off process so that he might be prepared for independent feeling during his earth existence.

Thus we have first a vegetable-animal creation consisting in products separated off from man, which prepares the possibility for the earthly human being to become a willing being. If all this had remained in man it would have taken possession of his will. His will would then have become entirely a physical function. Through having separated these things from himself the physical is put outside of him and the will assumes a psychic character.

In like manner, through this second creation feeling assumes a psychic character. Not until the middle of the Atlantean epoch do there develop out of these animals and plants the animals and plants that are similar to ours of today. The earth at that time had reached a stage similar in appearance to what it is now. The same chemical substances as are recognized by the chemists of today were also in existence. Gradually there developed what we know as carbon, oxygen, the alkaline heavy metals, and the like. These things were developed by that time.

Thereby man was able to make the third separation from himself, viz., that which he today forms in his surroundings as the plant-animal world. And inasmuch as he separated this off from himself and inasmuch as there arose around him the present-day creation he has become prepared for his life on earth as a thinking being.

Thus we must say that humanity was not then divided as it is today into single individuals. There was one common humanity, still of a psychic and spiritual nature, sinking itself in the ether. For this common humanity came down from the cosmos with the ether which streamed down to the earth from the cosmos.

Humanity then went through those events which you find described in my Outline of Occult Science. It came to the earth, went away to the other planets, and came back again in the Atlantean epoch. This went on continually alongside the other happenings, for whenever something was separated off humanity could not remain on the earth. It had to go away in order to strengthen the inner forces, which were now of a much finer, more psychic nature. Then humanity came down again. You may read about these events in more detail in my Outline of Occult Science. They are as follows: Man, humanity, really belonged to the cosmos, and prepared for himself his own earthly environment by sending into the domain of the earth those things which he separated from him, and which then became the other kingdoms of nature. They are now in the domain of the earth, where man is surrounded by them. And now we can say: By sending these castoff products into the domain of the earth man gradually developed within him that which furnished him as an earthly human being with willing, feeling and thinking.

For that which man is today as a thinking, feeling and willing being, which, during the period between birth and death rests upon a physical organic foundation, has only gradually developed, and it is connected with those beings who, for the sake of human evolution, have separated in the course of time from the human kingdom. Owing to this separation they have metamorphosed themselves to their present forms.

You see from what has now been said that we do not speak merely in a general abstract way about this relationship with that which is of a metallic nature in the earth. For when one is united with these metals, which conceal within them the memory of earthly events one can then really speak of what one remembers, one really finds what I have related today.

When we travel back into those earlier times we find everything more fleeting, more quickly vanishing. Just contemplate the grandiose, the majestic outlook which I have described to you. Those wax-like mobile silicate forms in which the outlined forms of the plant-world arise which suck themselves full of the soft albuminous substance, and thereby present in the earthly environment to which we look up something which grows green and fades away again. Think over these things and you yourselves will say: In contrast with plants growing on the earth today with firm roots and solid leaves; or, compared with present-day trees with their hard trunk, all that is a fleeting picture. Just think how fleeting those earlier forms were compared with the oak-tree of today! (The oak itself is not proud of its firmness, but those living round it generally are, for they confound their own frequent weakness with the firmness of the oak.) If you compare the hardness of the oak of today with the substance of those ancient plant-forms, how feeble is their rising, how feeble their fading away, like shadows rising in the atmosphere, condensing, then vanishing away! Or if you compare this with a coarser case, say, a hippopotamus or an elephant of today, or any living mammal in its stout skin—compare these with the creatures of that early time, when as coagulated albumen they came out from the common albuminous mass and were seized on by the chalk, and through that process in somewhat denser fashion developed indications of bones in the animal nature of the earth; how in this way they become somewhat denser and develop the first indications of a bony system. If you consider all this solidity of today compared with what the earth once was you will no longer be able to doubt that the further we go back the more fleeting and volatile are the conditions.

We then go further back to where there are only colour-formations surging up, weaving and living, which arise and pass away. If you then take the description of the Old Sun, of Old Saturn, the predecessors of the earth as you will find them given in my Outline of Occult Science you will say that all this is comprehensible when we know that we have to go back from the present time to an earlier condition. There this evanescent plant-formation absorbs the albumen and becomes something like a cloud-formation. At a still earlier period we find forms manifesting only in colour, such as I have described when speaking of the Sun existence or the Saturn existence.

Thus gradually, if we follow what is physical backwards through time we get away from the gross and elephantine, through the finer physical to the spiritual, and in this way, by paying attention to actual fact we get back to the spiritual origin of everything which belongs to the earth. The earth has its origin in the spiritual. That is the result of true vision, and I think it is a beautiful idea to be able to say: If you penetrate into the interior of the earth, and let the hard metals tell you what they remember they will relate the following: “We were once spread out in cosmic space in such a way that we were not physical substance at all, but in the spirit we were essence of colour, weaving in the cosmos, arising and vanishing.” The memory of the metals of the earth takes us back to that condition where the metals were cosmic colours, permeating one another, where the cosmos was in essential a kind of rainbow, a kind of spectrum, which then gradually differentiated itself and then became physical.

This is the point at which what I may call the merely theoretical impression communicated by the metallic element of the earth passed over into the moral impression. For each metal tells us at the same time: “I originate from the expanses of space and from earth-forms. I arise out of the heavenly kingdom. I am here drawn down and enchanted into the earth. But I await my redemption, for I shall once again fill the universe with my being.” When in this way we learn to understand the speech of the metals, then gold tells us of the Sun, lead tells us of Saturn, copper tells us of Venus. And then these metals say to us: “Once upon a time we extended far out, copper to Venus, lead to Saturn. Today we are enchanted here. But when the earth shall have so fulfilled her task that man shall have attained what only on the earth he can attain we shall extend out yonder again. We have been enchanted in this way so that man on the earth might become a free being. When freedom has been purchased for man, then our disenchantment too can begin.”

This disenchantment has already begun. We have only to understand it. We must understand how the earth, together with man, will develop further into the future.

When today man speaks of the “word” he means, as a rule, only the weak human word, which, in the presence of the majesty of the universe is of little significance. But we know that the John Gospel begins with the deeply significant words: “In the Primal Beginning was the Word, the Logos. And the Word was with God, and the Word was a god.”

Anyone who meditates on this significant commencement of the John Gospel must ask himself: What is really indicated when the Word is placed at the very beginning of all things? What is really meant by this Logos, this Word? And how is this meaning connected with our puny human word, so insignificant in the presence of the majesty of the universe?

The name of John is connected with the city of Ephesus, and he who, equipped with Imaginative insight into world history confronts these significant words: “In the Primal Beginning was the Logos. And the Logos was with God. And the Logos was a god,” is continually referred back along an inner path to the ancient temple of Diana of Ephesus. To him who is initiated to a certain degree in the cosmic mysteries that which sounds forth as a riddle in the first verses of the John Gospel points to the Mysteries of the Temple of Artemis or Diana at Ephesus; so that it must seem to him, through enquiry of the Mysteries of Ephesus something could be obtained which would lead to the understanding of the beginning of the John Gospel.

Let us therefore today, equipped with what has been brought before our souls in the last two lectures, look for a while into the Mysteries of the Temple of Diana at Ephesus. Let us look back into a time six or seven centuries or even earlier before the Christian era, in order to see what was done in this sanctuary so sacred to the ancients. We find that the instruction given in the Mysteries at Ephesus centred in the first place in that which sounds forth in human speech. We learn what took place in those Ephesian Mysteries not from any historical presentation (for human barbarism has taken sufficient care for the destruction of historical records), but we learn it from the Akashic Record, that Chronicle of etheric thought accessible to spiritual cognition, in which the events of the world's history are inscribed.

In this Record there comes again and again to our perception the way in which the pupil was directed by the teacher to concentrate on human speech. Again and again the pupil was urged as follows: “Learn to feel in your own instrument of speech what really takes place in it when you speak.”

The processes which take place when a man speaks cannot be apprehended by coarse perceptions, for they are delicate and intimate. Let us consider first of all the external side of speech, for it was with this external side of speech that the instruction given in the Ephesian Mysteries began.

The attention of the pupil was first directed to the way in which the word sounds forth from the mouth. He was told over and over again: “Notice what you feel when the word sounds forth from the mouth.” The pupil had first to notice how, to a certain extent, something from the word ascends in order to take up into itself the thought of the head; and then, how something from the same word descends into man so that he might experience inwardly the content of feeling.

Again and again the pupil was directed to drive the greatest possible range of speaking through his throat, and at the same time to observe the surging up and sinking down, which is to be perceived in the word which presses forth from the throat. He had to make a positive and a negative assertion, “I am-I am not.” This he had to force through his throat in the most articulate way possible, and then observe how, in the words “I am” the feeling of that which rises is predominant while in the words “I am not” the feeling of that which descends prevails.

The pupil's attention was then directed even more closely to the intimate inner feeling and personal experiences of the word. He had to experience the following: From the word there mounts up towards the head something like heat, and this heat, this fire, catches hold of the thought. Downwards there flows something like a watery element, this pours downwards, as a glandular secretion pours forth within man. It was made clear to the pupil in the Mysteries of Ephesus that man makes use of the air in order to let the word sound forth. But in speaking, the air transforms itself into the next element, into fire, into heat, and draws down the thought from the heights of the head and envelopes it.

Again, because an alternating condition arises—this sending up of fire, and the sending down of that which is embodied in the word—the air, like a glandular secretion, trickles downwards as water, as a fluid element. By means of this latter process the word becomes inwardly perceptible, man can feel it inwardly. The word trickles downwards as a fluid element.

The pupil was then led into the actual mystery of speech; and this mystery is connected with the mystery of man. This mystery of man is today barricaded off from scientific men, for science places as the crowning point of all thought the most incredible caricature of a truth, namely, the so-called law of the conservation of energy and of matter. In man matter is being continually transformed. It does not remain. The air which is driven forth from the throat is transformed as it goes, alternately into the next higher element, into the element of heat or fire, and again into the element of water, Fire-Water-Fire-Water.

The pupil at Ephesus was made to notice that when he spoke, a series of waves poured forth from his mouth; fire-water-fire-water; but this is nothing more nor less than the striving of the word upwards towards thought, and the trickling downwards of the word towards feeling. Thus in man's speech thought and feeling weave, in that by this living wave-movement of speech the air is rarefied into fire on the one hand, and again it is condensed into water, and so on.

When in the Mysteries of Ephesus this great truth was brought before the soul of the pupil by means of his own speech it was intended that he should feel the following:

“Speak, oh Man! and thou revealest through thyself the evolution of the world.”

At Ephesus when the pupil went in at the door of the Mysteries he was always exhorted with these words:

“Speak, oh Man! and thou revealest through thyself the evolution of the world.”

When he went out again this statement was made to him in another form:

“The evolution of the world is revealed through thee, oh Man! when thou speakest.”

And the pupil gradually felt as if he, with his own body, were as a veil over the cosmic mysteries which sounded from his breast and lived in his speech, as if he with his own body were enclosing these mysteries of the cosmos.

This was brought before the pupil as preparation for the really deeper mystery, because through this preparation he was able to realize that the individual human being was inwardly connected with the mysteries of the cosmos. The saying “Know Thyself” gained a sacred significance because it was uttered not merely theoretically, but because it was inwardly, solemnly felt and experienced.

When the pupil had in this manner to a certain extent ennobled and elevated his own human nature, in that he felt it as a veil covering the mystery of the cosmos, he could be led still further into that which extends the cosmic mystery as it were over the expanses of the cosmos. Here let us recall what was said in the last lecture.

I have pictured to you a condition in the evolution of the earth in which the following occurred. We know that in the former condition of the earth there existed as an essential substance for the earth-evolution at that stage all that unpretentious chalk which we also have in the Jura mountains. In the chalk deposits, in the limestone rocks of the earth we have that which we wish now to consider. We must think of the earth surrounded by that which in the last lecture I called fluid albumen. We know that the cosmic forces worked into this fluid albumen in such a way that it coagulated into definite forms. And you have heard that while this condition of the earth existed there took place in a denser substance to an enhanced degree what we today have in the rising of the mist and the falling of the rain. The chalky element rises upwards, permeates that which had condensed in the fluid albumen, filling it with chalk so that it took on bony formations, and in this way the animals developed in the course of evolution on the earth. The animals were drawn down from the still albuminous atmosphere by that which lives spiritually in the element of chalk.

I also said that when man unites himself with the metals of the earth, then he feels everything which then happened as part of his own being; it is like a memory which rises within him. As regards this stage of evolution he does not feel himself as a tiny man enclosed in a skin; he feels himself as embracing the whole earth-planet. To express this in a somewhat grotesque way I should say: Man feels essentially his head as encompassing the whole earth-planet.

The processes which I pictured in the last lecture man feels as taking place within himself. But how does he feel this within him? All that I have pictured to you as the rising of the chalk, the union of this chalk with the coagulated albumen, again its descent and the drawing down with it the animals to the earth, is so experienced by man that he hears it. He experiences it inwardly. Only you must conceive of it as inner experience. He hears it. This creation which arises when the chalk fills out the coagulated albumen and makes it gristly and bony—that which is thus formed is something heard and felt as if through the ear. The mystery of the world is heard.

In actual fact man experiences in memory, through the memory produced by the metals, the past of the earth, as though one heard resounding what I have described and in this resounding there lives and weaves world-happenings.

What is it then that man hears? These world-happenings, in what form do they reveal themselves? They reveal themselves as the Word of the cosmos, as the Logos. The Logos sounds forth, the macrocosmic Word in this rising and falling of the chalk. And when man is able to hear this speech within him he perceives something else besides. The following becomes actually possible.

We stand before a human or an animal skeleton. That which the science of anatomy has to say about these forms is very superficial, it is really disgracefully superficial. What can we say when, with inner connection with its natural and spiritual being we look at a skeleton? We say: Do not merely look at it. It is shocking merely to look at the forms—the spinal column with its wonderfully moulded vertebrae piled one upon another, with the ribs proceeding from it which bend and curve in front and are so wonderfully articulated together; the way in which the vertebrae are changed into the bones of the skull, the articulation of which is still more difficult to perceive; how the bow-shaped ribs enclose the cavity of the chest; how ball-shaped joints are formed for the bones of the arm and the bones of the leg. Confronted with this mystery of the skeleton we cannot do otherwise than say something quite clearly defined.

We must say to ourselves: Do not merely look at all this but listen to it; listen how one bone changes into another. An actual speech is here.

If at this point I may make a personal observation it is this: Something very wonderful comes before us if, with a feeling for these things, we enter a natural history museum, for there we have a wonderful collection of musical instruments, forming a mighty orchestra, which resounds in a most wonderful symphony. I experienced this very strongly when I visited the museum at Trieste. There, owing to a quite special arrangement of the animal skeletons (which was done instinctively) the effect was that from one end of the animal the mysteries of the moon resounded, and from the other the mysteries of the Sun. The whole was as though permeated by resounding suns and planets. There one could feel the connection between this bony system of chalk composition, the skeleton, and that which once rang forth to man out of the weaving universe, when he himself was still one with this universe, when it rang forth as the mystery of the world, rang forth to man at the same time as his own mystery.

The creatures which then arose, first of all, the animal creatures, thereby revealed their essential being, for the Being of the animal-kingdom lived in the Logos, in the resounding cosmic mystery. It was not two separate things which one perceived. One did not perceive the animals, and then in some other way the Being of the animals; that which spoke was the arising and development of the animals themselves in their own Being.

The pupil of the Ephesian Mysteries could take into his heart and soul in the right way for that age what could then be made clear to him concerning the Primal Beginning, when the Word, the Logos was active as the very essence and being of all things. The pupil was able to receive this mystery because he had prepared for it by ennobling and elevating his human nature, in that he had been able to feel himself as a covering or veil of the tiny reflection of this cosmic mystery which lay in the sounding forth of his own speech.

Let us now endeavour to feel how this development of the earth passed over from one level as it were to another. Let us consider this. In the element of chalk we have something which at that time was still fluid; the chalk ascended as vapour and fell in drops again as rain. The chalk was of a fluid nature. As it ascended it transformed itself into air; when it descended it changed into solid substance. It is one stage lower than in the human picture, where we have air transforming to heat and water. In that primeval condition the element of water was active, i.e. the chalk, still fluid was rarefied to air and condensed to solid substance; as in our throats today the air rarefies to heat and condenses to water. That which lived in the world rose from water to air. In primeval times it lived in water, rarefied itself to air and condensed to solid substance.

Thereby it is possible for us human beings to comprehend this mystery of the world in miniature. When this mystery was the great and mighty maya of the world it was one stage lower. The earth condensed everything. The chalk became denser, etc. We human beings could not have admitted this densifying tendency into our own inner being, even if it had come to us in miniature. We could only admit it when it had risen a stage higher, from water to air, and therewith in its surging upwards into the element of heat or downwards into water, which is now the denser element.

Thus the great world, the macrocosmic Mystery became the microcosmic Mystery of human speech, and it is to this cosmic Mystery, the translation into maya, into the great world, that the beginning of the John Gospel points:

“In the Primal Beginning was the Logos; and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was a god.”

For this it was that still lived and was active in the tradition of Ephesus, also when the evangelist, the writer of the John Gospel could read in the Akashic Record about Ephesus that for which his heart thirsted, the right form in which to clothe what he wanted to say to humanity concerning the mystery of the beginning of the world. We can now go a step further.

We may recall what was said last time, that, preceding the chalk there was the silica, which now appears in quartz. In this silica the plant-forms appeared, those cloud-like formations becoming green and fading away. And if, as I said, a man at that time could have looked out into the expanses of the cosmos he would have seen the arising of the animal-creation and those primeval plants which became green and then passed away. All this was perceived by man as an inner experience. He perceived it as part of his own being. In addition to hearing that which sounded forth in the animal creation as something living within himself man could in a certain sense inwardly accompany what he heard sounding forth, just as in his own head, in the human breast and head he can ascend with words through the heat in order to grasp thought. He could thus accompany that which he heard resounding in the creation of the animals after what he had experienced in the arising of the plants.

This was the remarkable thing: man experienced the process of the development of the animals in the vapourising and descending chalk. And when he traced further that which was in the silica as the plant-beings becoming green and fading away, the cosmic Word became the cosmic Thought, and the plants living in the silicious element added the Thought to the resounding Word.

One took as it were a step upwards, and to the resounding Logos the cosmic Thought was added; just as today, in the sounding word in speech, in the waves of speech (fire-water-fire-water) thought is grasped in the fire.

If you were to study certain diseased conditions of the sense-organs of the head, or of the sense-organs in general you would be able to observe the curative effects of silicic acid. Silicic acid then appears to you among the secrets of the cosmos as the thought-element in the original primeval plant-creation, and I might even say that this is the sense-perception of the earth in regard to the structure of the cosmos. In a wonderful way there is actually expressed microcosmically in the man of today that which once was macrocosmic, that which was the arising and evolution, the working and weaving of the world.

Only think for a moment how man lived then, still one with the cosmos, in unity with the cosmos. Today when man thinks, he has to think in isolation with his head. Within are his thoughts and his words come forth. The universe is outside. Words can only indicate the universe. Thoughts can only reflect the universe. When man was still one with the macrocosm this was not the case, for he then experienced the universe as if in himself. The Word was at the same time his environment. Thought was that which permeated and streamed through his environment. Man heard, and the thing heard was World. Man looked up from what he heard, but he looked up from within himself. The Word was first of all sound. The Word was something which struggled, as it were, to be solved like a riddle; in the rising of the animal creation something was revealed which struggled for a solution. Like a question the animal-kingdom arose within the chalk. Man looked into the silicic acid, and the plant-creation answered with that which it had taken up as the sense nature of the earth, and solved the riddles which the animal creation presented. These beings themselves mutually answered each other's questions. One being, in this case the animal, puts a question: the other beings, in this case the plants, supply the answer. The whole world becomes speech.

And we may now say: this is the reality at the beginning of the John Gospel. We are referred back to the primal beginning of all that now exists. In this Primal beginning, in this Principle, was the Word. And the Word was with God. And the Word was a god, For it was the creative Being in it all.

It is really the case that in that which was taught the Mystery-pupils at Ephesus concerning the primeval Word lies that which led to the opening sentences of the John Gospel. It is indeed very fitting for Anthroposophists to turn their attention today to these secrets which rest in the lap of time; for in a certain sense, in a very particular sense, that which stood here on the Dornach hill as the Goetheanum had become the centre of anthroposophical activity. The pain we feel today must continue to be pain, and will do so in everyone who was able to feel what the Goetheanum was intended to be. But to one who is striving upwards in his knowledge towards the spiritual all that takes place in the physical world must at the same time be for him an external manifestation, a picture of the spiritual which lies behind it. And if, on the one hand, we have to accept this pain, on the other hand, we as human beings striving after spiritual knowledge must be able to turn what has caused this pain into an opportunity for looking spiritually into a revelation which leads us into greater and greater depths. This Goetheanum was to have been a place in which one hoped to have spoken, and in which we have spoken again and again of those things which are connected with the opening words of the John Gospel:

“In the Primal Beginning was the Word—the Logos—and the Word was with God, and a god was the Word.”

Then the Goetheanum was destroyed by fire. This terrible picture of the burning Goetheanum arises before us. The pain may give birth to the summons to look ever more deeply into that which lives in the power of our thought, into this burning Goetheanum of New Year's Eve. That is an experience, painful though it is, which leads us into greater and greater depths. That which we wished to have founded in this Goetheanum, which with some things I have said is connected with the John Gospel, these already form an enclosure within these burning consuming flames. And it is an important impulse which we may grasp: Let these flames be for us the occasion to look through them to other flames, those flames which once long ago consumed the Temple of Ephesus. Let us look upon them as a summons to us to try and fathom that which stands at the beginning of the John Gospel. Urged by this painfully sacred impulse, let us look back from the John Gospel to the Temple of Ephesus—which once was also burned down—and then in the Goetheanum flames, which speak indeed so painfully we shall receive a monition from that which streams into the Akasha with the burning flames of the Ephesian Temple.

Even today, if we look back on that night of misfortune, to those fierce flames of the Goetheanum conflagration, do we not still find in them the molten metals of the musical instruments which speak a language so pure and holy? Do we not find in these molten metals those musical instruments which conjured into the flames those wonderful colours—variously speaking colours—colours closely connected with the metals? Through connection with the metals something arises like memory in the earth-substance. This memory we have of that which was consumed with the Temple at Ephesus. And just as these two conflagrations may be connected, so the longing to investigate the meaning of “In the Primal Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and a god was the Word” may be connected somewhat with the words which again and again were made clear to the pupil at Ephesus: “Study the mystery of man in the small word, in the micrologos; thereby thou shalt make thyself ripe to experience in thyself the mystery of the macrologos.”

Man is the microcosm as contrasted with the world which is the macrocosm, but he also bears within him the mysteries of the cosmos, and we can decipher the cosmic mystery contained in the first three verses of the John Gospel if we bear in mind in the right sense that into which, as into many other things also, the flames of the Goetheanum condensed, as if in written characters:

“Behold the Logos
In the burning fire
Seek the solution
In the house of Diana.”

The Akashic Record of the fire of last New Year's Eve speaks these words very clearly, together with many others; and they make on us the demand to establish in the microcosm the micrologos, so that man may gain the understanding of that out of which his whole being has been formed—the macrocosmos—through the macrologos.

I had to speak to you last time of the Ephesian Mysteries of Artemis in order to draw your attention to certain connections between that which in the course of human evolution has become known, and that which today can be re-discovered through insight into the spiritual world. In order to amplify the theme already treated, I should like to speak today of another Mystery Centre which also stands in a certain sense at the starting-point of modern spiritual life, in that it has given impulses to this modern spiritual movement, and yet has taken over much from the older spiritual movements in which the primeval wisdom of man was enshrined. I wish to speak of those Mystery Centres and their keynote-giving impulses, once to be found on the island of Ireland, the Mysteries of Hibernia concerning which indications are given in my Mystery Plays.

It is relatively much harder to approach in the Akashic Record (to which I have often referred in my writings), it is relatively much harder to approach the ancient Mystery Centres of Hibernia, that much-tried island to the West of England, to call up in meditative vision the pictures which are imprinted in the Eternal Record, than it is in the case of the other Mystery Centres. For when these Mystery Centres of Hibernia are approached with inner vision one receives the impression that the pictures of these Centres possess extraordinarily repelling forces, forces which push one back. Yet if one goes forward with some degree of courage in such matters these repelling forces are through such courage not so hard to overcome as in other similar cases; they offer nevertheless, even to a courageous spiritual gaze resistance which produces, I might say, a kind of bewilderment. So that it is only against obstruction that one can arrive at that which I shall now describe. You will see during the next few days why there had to be such obstruction to knowledge.

In these Mystery Centres there were of course Initiates, who had received the old primeval wisdom of humanity, and who, moved and inspired up to a certain stage by this primeval wisdom, could attain to a kind of insight of their own. And there were pupils, candidates for Initiation, in the particular way in which instruction was given in that place, who were led on to the Cosmic Word. Now, if we look into the preparation which, first of all, the candidates received in Hibernia, we find that this preparation consisted in two things. The first was, that those who were to be prepared were led to face in their souls all the difficulties of knowledge. All that which, I may say, may be the torture of the path of knowledge—not that path of knowledge which leads into the depths of existence, but that path which simply requires that we shall intensify our everyday consciousness as strongly as is possible to each one of us—all the difficulties which offer themselves to the ordinary consciousness on this path of knowledge were brought before the souls of the pupils. All the doubts, all the troubles, all the inner striving and the frequent catastrophes of this inner striving, the becoming disillusioned through Logic and Dialectic, be these ever so good, all this had to be gone through. The pupils had to go through all that we experience as difficulties if we have really gained knowledge and then wish to put it into words.

You can realize that it is one thing to have attained a truth and quite another thing to be able to express it, to formulate it. Treading earnestly the path of knowledge we always have the feeling that that which we can clamp into words is something no longer strictly true, it is truth wedged between all kinds of cliffs and pitfalls.

All that can be thus experienced, which he only knows who has really trodden the path of striving after knowledge, all this was to be experienced by the pupils.

The second thing that they had to experience in their souls was how little of that which by the usual way of consciousness can become knowledge contributes to human happiness, how little Logic, Dialectic, Rhetoric can contribute to human happiness. On the other hand it was shown to these pupils that man, if he would keep his balance in life, must take part in that which to a certain extent will bring him joy and happiness. Thus the pupils were driven on the one side near to one abyss, and on the other side near to another abyss, and always forced as if to doubt and to wait till a bridge had been built for them over each abyss. And they were so deeply initiated into the doubts and difficulties of knowledge that by the time they were led from this preparation actually to enter the Cosmic Mysteries they had come to the conclusion: if it must be so, then we will renounce all knowledge, we will renounce all that cannot bring happiness to man.

In all cases in the ancient Mysteries men were subjected to stern tests, and were actually brought to the point where in the most natural and simple way they developed feelings which ordinary commonplace reasoning considers as without foundation. It is easy to say: No one wishes to renounce knowledge, it stands to reason that man desires to get knowledge, even if it presents great difficulties. This is what people quite naturally say who do not know the difficulties, and who are not led systematically into these difficulties as were the pupils of the Mysteries in Hibernia.

It is also easy to say: Man is willing to renounce inner happiness as well as outer happiness and wishes only to pursue the path of knowledge. But to him who understands these things as they are, both these dicta, so often heard, are altogether beside the mark.

When the pupils had been prepared up to the grade required they were led before two colossal statues, before two great, mighty, majestic statues. The one was more majestic on account of its huge dimensions, the other was equally large but it was in addition impressive through its peculiar aspect. One statue was a male form, the other female.

Through these statues the pupils experienced the approach of the Cosmic Word. These statues were to them, as it were, the external letters by means of which they must begin to decipher the Cosmic Secret placed before men.

One of the statues, the male statue, was of wholly elastic material, compressible in every part. The pupils were made to press the statue in every part. Through this action, it revealed itself to them as hollow. It was in fact only the skin of a statue made of elastic material, so that after being pressed it regained the same shape.

Over this statue, over the head of this statue which was peculiarly characteristic, over the head there was something which represented the Sun.

The whole head was such that one saw it must really be as a Soul-Eye. The head as Soul-Eye represented microcosmically the content of the whole macrocosm. This manifestation of the whole macrocosm came to expression through the Sun in this colossal head.

One of the statues then made the impression directly upon the pupil: Here the macrocosm works through the Sun and forms the human head, which knows what are the impulses of the macrocosm and forms itself inwardly and outwardly according to these impulses of the macrocosm.

The other statue was such that first of all the eyes of the pupil fell on something like bodies of light raying inwards with light. And in the midst the pupil then saw a female form, standing wholly under the influence of these rays. And the feeling came to him that the head was created out of these rays. There was something indefinite about the head.

This statue was of another substance, a plastic substance, not elastic but plastic and extraordinarily soft. The pupil was made to press it also. Every pressure he made remained. Only always between one time when the pupil was tested before this statue and the next time the indentations he had made were corrected. So that whenever the pupils were led to the same ceremony before this statue the statue was always intact again. In the case of the other statue, the elastic one, the whole form recovered itself of its own accord.

The impression received in the case of the second statue was that it stood wholly under the influence of the moon-forces which permeated the organism and caused the head to grow out of the organism. An extraordinarily powerful impression was made on the pupils by what they thus experienced. They were often brought before this statue; each time the indentations were corrected. Often a group of pupils were led, at not too long intervals, before this statue.

When they were led before this statue on the first occasions soundless silence prevailed around them. They were led up to the statue by those already initiated and were then left, the door of the temple behind being shut. They were left in their solitude.

Then came a time when each pupil was taken by himself and made to test the statue, to experience for himself the Elasticity of the first, and in the second case the plasticity in which the indentations he had made remained. Then he was left alone by himself with the impression, which as I have already indicated was working powerfully, most powerfully upon him. And through all that he had formerly, gone through along the path which I have described to you, in which all difficulties as regards knowledge, all difficulties as regards happiness were experienced, there arose in the pupil a certain longing. Indeed, to experience such things signifies much more than the mere words which I now use express. Such experience signifies that one goes through a complete scale of sensations, and these sensations caused the pupil to have the most vivid longing when he was brought before these two statues, that what appeared to him as a great riddle should in some way or other become solved in his soul, that he should get to understand the nature of this riddle—on the one hand that he should understand the nature of this riddle, and on the other hand the problem as to what lay in the forms and in the whole manner in which he was to relate himself to them. All this worked in a deep, strangely deep way upon the pupils. And they stood before the statues in their whole soul and in their whole spirit as, I might say, a colossal question-mark. Everything in them was a question, Reason asked, the heart asked, the will asked, everything, everything asked. The man of today can still learn from these things, which were brought perceptibly before the mind in former ages, things which today can no longer be brought perceptibly before the mind in this way and used for Initiation, he can still learn what a scale of sensations one must go through in order really to approach the truth, truth which then leads into the secrets of the world. For even if the right way today for the student is to go through these things by an inner path of development, outwardly imperceptible to the senses, it still remains a fact that the modern student must go through the same scale of sensations, must struggle in himself through these sensations in inner meditative experience. Thus the same scale of sensations can be experienced by him which was gone through in the old manner of civilization, in those old times by men who were to be initiated.

When this was gone through, the pupils were led through a kind of probation in which both experiences worked together, on the one side, that which they had previously gone through in the preparation stage on the ordinary path of knowledge and on the ordinary path of happiness, and on the other side, what had become in them a great question of the whole mind, indeed of the whole man. These then had to work together.

And now, because they had inwardly realized the working together of these experiences, they were led as far as possible at that time before the Cosmic Mysteries of the Microcosm, and of the Macrocosm, before something of that Union which we have touched upon in these lectures, which formed the content of the Artemis Mysteries of Ephesus, a part of which was brought before the pupils during a kind of Probation-time. Thereby the great question in the minds of the pupils became intensified. So that the pupil, through the tremendous deepening which his mind experienced and endured, was actually led in this question form to the Spiritual world. In actual fact his experience brought him into that region which the soul experiences when it feels: I stand now before the Power which guards the Threshold.

In earlier times of humanity there were the most different kinds of Mysteries, and men were led in the most different ways to that which we must feel in the words: Now I am standing on the threshold of the spiritual world. I know why this spiritual world is guarded from ordinary consciousness, and I know wherein lies the Being of the protecting Power, the Guardian of the Threshold.

After the pupils had gone through this time of Probation they were led again before the statue. They then received a quite remarkable impression, an impression which in actual fact shook their whole inner being. I can only represent the impression to you by rendering what was practised in that ancient language into modern speech.

When the pupils had advanced as far as I have described each one was again taken singly before the statue. But now the initiating priest, the Initiator, remained with the pupil in the temple. And now the pupil saw, after he once again in soundless silence had listened to that which his own soul could say to him after all his preparation and testing, after a still longer time had elapsed, he saw his initiating priest as if rising above the head of the first statue. And it then appeared as if the sun were further back, and in the space between the statue and the sun the priest appeared as if covering the sun. The statues were very large so that the priest, relatively small in size, only appeared here above the head of the statue, the rest of him was below, to a certain extent covering the sun. Then came forth as if out of a musical-harmonic (the ceremony began with a musical-harmonic) the speech of the initiator. And when the pupil was at this stage it seemed to him as if the words which sounded from the lips of the Initiator were pronounced by the statue. And the words sounded to him as follows:

Ich bin das Bild der Welt
Sieh wie das Sein mir fehlt
Ich lebe in deiner Erkenntnis
Ich werde in dir nun Bekenntnis.

I am the Image of the World
Behold, I lack Being
I live in thy knowledge
I become now in thee Consecration.

This too, made, as you may imagine, a powerful impression on the pupil for he had been prepared for it through that Power which came to meet him in the form of this statue, and which said to him:—

Ich bin das Bild der Welt
Sieh, wie das Sein mir fehlt
Ich lebe in deiner Erkenntnis
Ich werde in dir nun Bekenntnis.

I am the Image of the World
Behold, I lack Being
I live in thy knowledge
I become now in thee Consecration.

Through his preparation as regards the difficulty of the ordinary path of knowledge, he was also prepared to accept this Image as something which released him from those difficulties, even though he could not overcome in himself doubt as regards knowledge, and he was brought to have the feeling that he could not overcome these knowledge doubts. He was prepared inwardly, through the fact that all this had passed through his soul, to cling, as it were, with his whole soul to this Image, to live with the Cosmic Power which was symbolized through this Image, to live with this Cosmic Power, to give himself, so to speak, up to it. He was prepared for this because he experienced that which now came from the mouth of the priest and which seemed to him as if this statue were simply the written character which placed before the pupil the meaning which lies in these four lines.

After the priest had stepped back and the pupil was left again in soundless silence, after the priest had gone out leaving the pupil alone, a second Initiator came after a little time. This one then appeared over that second statue and again out of a musical-harmonic resounded the voice of this priest-initiator. And this voice pronounced the words which I give to you as follows:—

Ich bin das Bild der Welt
Sieh, wie Wahrheit mir fehlt
Willst du mit mir zu leben wagen
So werd ich dir zum Behagen.

I am the Image of the World
Behold, I lack Truth,
If thou wilt dare to live with me
I will be thy Consolation.

And now, after all these preparations, after indeed he had been led to experience inner happiness, inner fullness—I would rather say “inner fullness of joy” instead of “happiness,” because the German word “Gluck” does not give the right meaning—after the pupil, through all that he had experienced, had been brought to feel the necessity that man should come to this inner fullness of joy, now that he, hearing what the second statue said to him, had felt this necessity, he was again on the point, not only almost but actually on the point of recognizing the Cosmic Power which spoke through this second statue as that Power to which he wished to devote himself.

Again the Initiator vanished. Again the pupil was left alone, and during this silence and solitude each one really felt in himself—at least it appeared that each one felt something which may perhaps be expressed in the following words I stand on the threshold of the spiritual world. Here in this physical world there is something we call knowledge, but it has really no value in the spiritual world. And the difficulties which we have in the physical world with regard to knowledge are only the physical reflection of the worthlessness of the knowledge which in this physical world one can gain of the super-sensible, of the spiritual world. So he had the feeling: Many say to me here in the physical world, ‘You must renounce the inner fullness of joy, you must tread the path of asceticism in order to enter the spiritual world,’ but that is really illusion, that is deception. For that which appears in this second statue says itself expressly: “Behold, I lack Truth.” Thus the pupil, on the threshold of knowledge came near to the feeling: One must struggle through to the inner joyful fullness of soul, of mind, shutting out that which here in the physical world through weak human striving, bound up with the physical body, is longed for as truth. The pupils had indeed the feeling that on that side of the threshold things must look quite otherwise than here on this side, that much that is valued on this side is worthless on that, and that even such things as knowledge and truth present a wholly different appearance on the other side of the threshold.

All these were experiences which called forth in the pupil the consciousness that he had reached beyond many illusions and disappointments in the physical world. But there were also feelings which from time to time were like inwardly active flames of fire. So that he felt himself as if consumed by inner fire, as if inwardly annihilated. And the soul swung backwards and forwards between one feeling and the other. The pupil was, so to speak, tested in the balances of knowledge and happiness. While he went through this inner experience it was to him as if the statues themselves desired to speak. He had now attained something like the Inner Word. It was as if the statues themselves would speak. One statue said: I am knowledge. But what I am has no Being. And now the pupil was wholly filled one might say with this feeling of radiating fear: What man has of ideas is only Idea; there is no Being in it. Let man exert his human head—so the pupil felt—he certainly reaches ideas but he never reaches Being. Ideas are illusion, not Being.

And the other statue, as if speaking, said: I am Phantasy, but what I am has no Truth. Thus the two statues confronted the pupil, the one statue represented that ideas have no Being, and the other that the images of Phantasy have no Truth.

I beg you to understand here that nothing dogmatic is being presented to you, no phrases are being coined to express any truths or knowledge. The point is to give the experiences of the pupil in the sanctuaries of Hibernia. The content of that which stands in these sentences is not to be announced as a truth, but that which in the moment of Initiation the pupil experienced in the Hibernian Mysteries must now be written down.

All this the individual pupil experienced in absolute loneliness. His inner experience was so powerful that his outer senses functioned no longer. They functioned no longer. After a time he no longer saw the statue. But he read as in letters of flame on the place upon which he was gazing something indeed which was not outwardly physical, but which he saw with terrific clearness. He read there where he had seen before the head of the Knowledge-statue, he read the word “Science,” and there where he had seen the head of the other statue he read the word “Art.”

After he had experienced this he was led back through the Temple door. The two Initiators again stood by the temple. One of them directed the head of the pupil towards that which the other Initiator pointed out—the Form of Christ.

And at the same time there fell words of warning. The priest who had directed him to the Christ-picture said to him: “Receive the Word and the Power of this Being into thy heart.” And the other priest said: “And receive from Him what the two Images wished to give thee—Science and Art.”

These were, so to speak, the first two Acts of the Hibernian Initiation, the peculiar way in which, in Hibernia, the pupils were led to the actual experience of the innermost Being of Christianity.

And this stamped itself quite deeply into the souls and minds of the pupils. And now, after they had imprinted this into themselves, they could proceed further on their Path of Knowledge. What has to be said, and can be said of this, we shall study in the next few days in connection with other matters.

You have seen that the Initiation of the Hibernian Mysteries described yesterday had for its object a real insight into the secrets of the world and man, for the inner soul-experiences of which I had to speak were of a deeply impressive kind for the human mind and soul-life. They really concern everything which leads man along the path into the spirit-world, so that by means of specially impressive inner experiences he attains to certain conquests, essentially strengthens his own power through these conquests, and thereby by one way or another presses through into the spirit-world.

We saw, then, how in Initiation in Hibernia the candidate was placed before two symbolic statues—we must not misunderstand the word “symbolic.” I described to you, firstly, the nature of these statues and secondly, through what sensations and soul-experiences the pupil was conducted on the occasions for contemplation of these statues.

Now you must be quite clear on this point; the impression that one receives from such majestic statues in circumstances such as I have described is of course not to be compared with that which one receives through description only, but is an extraordinarily powerful, inner impression. Hence it was possible that after the pupil had gone through all that I have described the Initiator was able to cause the experiences he had gone through in the presence of each individual statue to echo for a long while in his mind. The pupil was simply kept to this, that that which he had experienced through the male statue, through the female statue, echoed in him. For weeks together—these things are determined by the Karma of the pupil—sometimes longer, in many cases shorter, the pupils were kept above all to feel the echo of the one, of the male statue. The tests of which I spoke yesterday were first made in the case of both statues, for the impressions which were made by both statues had to flow together into the deepest soul-life of the pupil. Yet the pupil was held in the most intense fashion to the experience of the impression which he had received from the male statue. And I will now describe the impression as it echoed in him.

Of course, for this, we must use words which are not coined for initiation experiences such as these. Hence much that is expressed in these words must be realized according to its true inner significance. That which the pupil at first experienced when he gave himself up to the impression from the male statue, was a kind of soul-freezing, an actual benumbing of soul, a soul-stiffening, which came over him more and more the oftener he allowed these things to echo within him—a soul numbness which felt like a bodily numbness. In the intervening periods of time the pupil might certainly care for what is necessary for life, but his soul was again and again brought into this echo, and he then experienced this numbness. This numbness brought about an alteration of his consciousness—it was certainly a very stern Initiation even if it no longer recalled the ancient form of the Primeval Mysteries. One cannot say that the consciousness was dulled, but the pupil became aware: “The state of consciousness into which I have come is one to which I am wholly unaccustomed. I can actually at first make no use of it. I can make nothing of it.” The pupil really only felt that this state of consciousness was filled with a sensation of numbness. But presently he felt that that which was benumbed in him, in fact he himself, had been taken up by the Cosmos. He felt as if transported into the expanses of the Universe. He could say to himself: “The Cosmos receives me.”

Then something quite extraordinary came to him—not a vanishing of consciousness but an alteration of consciousness. When the pupil had experienced this kind of numbness for a sufficiently long time—the Initiators had to take care that it was a sufficiently long time—when the pupil had experienced this kind of numbness, and this being taken up by the Cosmos, so that he said to himself somewhat as follows: “The rays of the sun, the rays of the stars are drawing me, they are drawing me out into the whole Cosmos yet I remain actually together within myself;” when the pupil had experienced this long enough he attained a remarkable perception. He now actually learned to know whence arose this consciousness which had come upon him during the numbness, for now he received, according to his experiences echoing from this or that, the most manifold impressions of winter-landscapes. Winter landscapes were before him in the spirit, winter landscapes in which he looked into whirling flakes of snow which filled the air—all, as has been said, seen in the spirit—or landscapes where he gazed into forests, where snow lay pressing down the trees or the like, really things which, as has been said, recalled that which he had seen here or there in life, and which always gave him the impression of reality. So that he felt after he had been taken up by the Cosmos, as if his own consciousness conjured up whole wanderings in time through winter landscapes, and at the same time he felt as if he were not in his body but nevertheless in his sense organs. He felt his being in his eyes, he felt his being in his ears, he felt his being also on the surface of his skin. Here especially when he experienced his sense of feeling, his sense of touch spread out over his skin, he perceived: “I have become like the elastic but hollow statue.” And he felt an inner union of his eyes, for example, with these landscapes. He felt as if this whole landscape that he gazed upon were active in each eye, as if it worked everywhere into his eye, as if his eye were an inner mirror for all that which appeared outside.

But there was something more that he felt; he did not feel himself as a unity, but in very fact he felt his ego multiplied as many times as he had senses; he felt his ego multiplied twelve times, and because he felt his ego multiplied twelve times there came to him this remarkable experience, so that he said: “There is an ego that sees through my eye, there is an ego that works through my sense of thinking, in my sense of speech, in my sense of touch, in my sense of life. I am really split up in the world.” From this arose a living longing for union with a Being out of the Hierarchy of the Angels, in order that from this union with the Being out of the Hierarchy of the Angels he should receive ability and power to control this splitting-up of the ego into the individual sense-experiences. And out of all this there arose in his ego the experience: “Why have I my senses?”

This whole peculiar experience was such that the pupil felt how all that is connected with the senses and with the nerve continuations of the senses inwardly and is one with the inner being of man, how that this is related to the actual surroundings on earth. The senses belong to the winter—this is what the pupil felt. In this whole life which he went through in the changing winter landscapes which, as has been said, recalled that which he had seen in life, but which with great beauty rayed from the spiritual towards him, out of all this experience the pupil gained a unified condition of soul. This unified condition of soul had the following content: I have experienced in my Mystery Winter-wandering that which in the Cosmos is actually past. The snow and ice-masses of my magic winter have shown me what destructive forces work in the Cosmos. I have learned to know the impulses of destruction in the Cosmos, and my numbness on the way to my Mystery Winter-wandering was indeed the announcement that I should see into that which was present in the Cosmos as forces which come over out of the past into the present, but arrive in the present as dead Cosmic forces.

This was first of all communicated to the pupil through the echo of his experiences before the male statue.

Then he was brought to the echo of his experiences with the statue which was plastic, not elastic. And it was as if he now fell, not into an inner numbness but into an inner condition of heat, as into a fever condition of the soul, into a fever condition of such a nature that things which have power, because of their inner nature, to work on the soul, manifested themselves first as bodily symptom-complexes. The pupil felt as if he were being inwardly pressed, as if everything were pressing hard, his breath were pressing hard, his blood in every direction were pressing too hard. The pupil experienced a great anxiety, even to a deep inner distress of soul. In this deep soul-distress the second thing arose which he had to experience, and that which was born for him out of the soul distress can be clothed somewhat in the following words: “I have something in me which in my ordinary earth-life is claimed by my corporality. This must be conquered, my earth-ego must be conquered.” This (impression) lived powerfully in the consciousness of the pupil.

Then when he had for a sufficiently long time experienced this inner condition of heat, this inner distress, this feeling that the earth-ego must be conquered, there arose in him something by which he knew that it was not the earlier state of consciousness, but it was a state of consciousness well known to him, the state of consciousness in dreaming. While, in the case of the first, which arose out of a numbness, he had clearly the feeling that he was in a condition of consciousness which he did not know in ordinary life, he now recognized in his condition of consciousness a kind of dreaming. He dreamed, but he dreamed in contrast to that which he had dreamed earlier, and again in reminiscence of that which he had experienced, the most wonderful summer landscapes. But he knew these were dreams, dreams which affected him with an intense joy or an intense pain, according to whether that which came to him out of the being of Summer was either sorrowful or joyful, but withal with the possession with which a man is possessed by dreams.

You only need to remember what is possible to a dream which first rises in pictures, out of which you wake with a beating heart, hot and in anxiety. This condition of being inwardly possessed made itself known to the pupil in a quite elementary natural way, so that he said to himself: “My inner being has brought the Summer as a dream to my consciousness, the Summer as a dream.”

The pupil now knew that that which was there as magic Summer before his consciousness in continuous change may be likened to the impulses from the vast Future of the Cosmos. But now he did not feel himself as he did before, dismembered into his senses as a multiplicity; he felt himself now truly drawn together as into a unity. He felt himself as drawn together into his heart.

This is the culmination, the highest point to which he attained, this being drawn together into his heart, this inner self-possession and feeling of kinship in his innermost human nature, not with the Summer as one sees it externally, but with the dream of this Summer.

And following on, the pupil said to himself “In that which the dream of Summer gives, which I inwardly experience in my human being, in that lies the future.” When the pupil had gone through this experience there came to him the experience that these two conditions followed each other. He looked, let us say, upon a landscape consisting of meadows, ponds and small lakes. He looked upon ice and snow. This changed into whirling, falling snow, like a mist of snowflakes. This prospect gradually grew dimmer, and finally vanished into nothing. In the moment when it vanished into nothing, when he felt himself to a certain extent in empty space, in that moment the summer-dreams rose on the threshold. And the pupil had the consciousness: “Now Past and Future meet in my own soul-life.”

And from now onwards the pupil learned to look on the outer world, and to say of this outer world as a permanent truth for the Future: In this world which surrounds us, in this world from which we derive our corporeality, in this world something continually is dying. In the winter crystals of the snow we have the outer sign of the spirit which is continually dying in matter. As men we are not yet fully in the condition to feel this dying spirit, which is rightly symbolized in outer nature in snow and ice, unless Initiation has taken place. But if Initiation has taken place then man knows that the spirit dies continually in matter, announces itself in freezing and frozen nature. Annihilation exists here everywhere. Out of this annihilation first of all something like nature-dreams are born. And nature-dreams contain the germs for the World future. But World death and World birth would not meet if man did not stand between them. For if man did not stand between them—as I have said, I am describing to you simply the experiences which the pupil of the Hibernian Initiation inwardly went through—if man did not stand between them the actual processes into which the pupil gazed by means of the new consciousness born of the numbness would be an actual world death, and the dream would not follow the world death. No Future would result out of the Past. Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth would be there; no Jupiter, no Venus, and no Vulcan. In order that the Future of the Cosmos may join itself to the Past man must stand between Past and Future. The pupil knew this directly out of what he experienced.

That which the pupil had lived through in this way was now summarized for him by his Initiators. The first condition, when he had gone through numbness, when he felt himself sucked up by the Cosmos, was summarized for him by his Initiators in words which I may give you somewhat in the following way, in the German language:

In den Weiten sollst du lernen
Wie in Blau der Aetherfernen
Erst das Weltensein entschwindet
Und in dir sich wiederfindet.

In spaces far and wide shalt thou learn
How in Blue of Ether-distance
World-Being first vanishes
And finds itself again in thee.

In these words were the experiences which had been gone through actually summarized.

Then the experiences of the second condition, the after-effects of the second statue were summarized:

In den Tiefen sollst du lösen
Aus dem heiss erflebernden Bösen
Wie die Wahrheit sich entzündet
Und durch dich im Sein sich ergründet.

In the depths shalt thou solve
The riddle of fever-heated evil
How Truth is enkindled
And through thee finds foundation in Being.

Remember that at the stage of which I spoke at the end of yesterday's lecture, the pupil was dismissed with the words which appeared in the place of the two statues, with the words “Science,” “Art.” “Science” appeared in the place of the statue which actually said: “I am Knowledge but I lack Being.” “Art” was written in the place of the statue which said: “I am Phantasy, but I lack Truth.” And the pupil had experienced all the difficulty, all the inner fearful difficulty, because inwardly full of desire he had actually chosen something else instead of knowledge. For it had become quite clear to him: Concerning knowledge which is acquired on earth, only ideas, only images belong to it; Being is lacking. The pupil had now experienced the after-effects. Out of the after-effects he had learned to know that man must find Being for the knowledge he has acquired, by losing himself in Cosmic spaces:

In Spaces far and wide shalt thou learn
How in Blue of Ether-distance
World-Being first vanishes
And finds itself again in thee.

For this was in fact the sensation He rushes out as it were into Ether-distances which are bounded by the Blue of Space. He unites himself at last with this Blue of the far distances, but then that which was Earth is so scattered into the far spaces that it is as if changed into nothingness. And the pupil learned to experience annihilation in gazing upon the magic winter landscape. And he knows now that it is man alone who can hold himself upright in these far spaces, which lead away into the blue Ether-distances.

The tendency of Phantasy to disregard truth, that very tendency to be contented with a relationship to the world which does not include truth but runs amok in arbitrary subjective pictures, this tendency the pupil had experienced. But now, out of the dreamlike magical Summer experience he had gained the insight can carry out into the world that which as creative Phantasy arises in me. Out of my inner Being like the pictures of Phantasy grow Imaginations, Imaginations of plants. If I had only the pictures of Phantasy I should be a stranger to that which is around me. If I have Imaginations, there grows out of my own inner being that which I then find in this plant or that plant, in this animal or that animal, in this man or that man, all that I find in my inner being clothes itself in something that is external to me. And for everything that confronts me in the outer world I can cause to arise out of the depths of my own Soul-Being something which is connected with it, something which clothes itself with it.

This two-fold connection with the world is something which remained with the pupil as an inner grand and impressive sensation as the after-effect of both statues. And the pupil really learned in this way, on the one side to stretch his soul spiritually out into Cosmic Spaces, and on the other to plunge deeply into his own inner being, where this inner being works, not with the feebleness of ordinary consciousness but where it works with half-reality, i.e., chilled or shaken and bewitched as by dreams. The pupil learned to bring this whole intensity of inner impulse into union with the whole intensity of outer impulse. Out of the relation to the winter landscape and the relation to the summer landscape he has struggled through to explanations concerning external nature and concerning himself; he has become closely related to external nature and to himself. Then he was well prepared to go, as it were, through a kind of recapitulation. In this recapitulation it was brought clearly before his soul by his Initiators: “Thou must inwardly control thy soul in its condition of numbness. Thou must inwardly control thy going out into Cosmic Spaces, and thirdly, thou must inwardly control thyself when thou dost feel poured out into and multiplied in thy senses. Thou must make inwardly clear to thyself what each condition is, thou must be able to distinguish exactly each one of these three conditions from the other, thou must have an etheric inner experience of each one of these three conditions.”

When the pupil now called up again before his soul in full consciousness the condition of inner numbness there appeared before his soul all that he had experienced before he had descended from the spiritual worlds to Earth, before the earthly conception of his body, when he had drawn together out of cosmic spaces etheric impulses and etheric forces in order to surround himself with an etheric body. The pupil in the Mysteries of Hibernia was thus guided into the vision of the last condition before the descent into the physical body. Then he had to make quite clear to himself the inner experience when he went out into the Cosmic Spaces. Here he felt at this second time, at this recapitulation, not as if he were sucked up by the rays of the sun and the stars, but he felt at this recapitulation as if something came to meet him, as if from all sides out of the spaces the Hierarchies came to meet him, as if other experiences also came to meet him. He felt also that which lay still further behind in his pre-earthly life. Then he had to make quite clear to himself the condition when he was poured out into the senses, and found himself as if split up into the sense-world. For here he had reached the middle point of existence, between death and a new birth.

You see how that which gives the candidates for Initiation entrance into these hidden worlds, worlds to which, however, man with his being belongs, can be reached in the most manifold ways. And when we look around in the way in which yesterday and indeed frequently I have indicated, then we may say: In the different Mystery Centres the vision into the super-sensible world is reached in the most manifold ways.

Why man must strive in such manifold ways, why in all the Mysteries a single spiritual path was not indicated, we shall show in later lectures. Today I only mention the fact. But all these different paths of the Mysteries were appointed in order to unveil the hidden sides of existence in regard to the world and man, which have again and again been shown from the most varied points of view here in these studies and in other lectures and writings.

It was then made clear to the pupil that he ought also now to go through those other conditions which he had experienced as an echo from the other statue, he must live through those conditions inwardly separated, so that for each single condition he should always have an inner clear knowledge according to the feeling which he had experienced, which he should recall then in full consciousness. This then he did. And in the case of that of which I have spoken as a kind of distress of the soul, he felt directly that which follows in the soul-experience after death.

Then came the vision through that which he further experienced, when external nature showed itself in summer landscape, but as a dream of summer landscape.

When he lived through this again, and with a full consciousness now separated this condition from the other condition of consciousness, he learned to know what would be the further progress of his post-earthly life. And when he made the feeling of compression into his heart's being quite clear and living in his consciousness, then he could reach to the middle point of existence between death and a new birth. And the Initiator could say to him:

Leme geistig Wintersein schauen
Und dir wird der Anblick des Vorirdischen.

Lerne geistig Sommersein träumen
Und dir wird das Erleben des Nachirdischen.

Learn in spirit to see Winter-being
To thee will come the vision of the pre-earthly.

Learn in spirit to dream Summer-being
To thee will come experience of the post-earthly.

I beg you to notice exactly the words which I use, for in the relation here of the vision of the pre-earthly to the experience of the post-earthly, and in the relation of seeing to dreaming, rests the mighty difference which lay in these two experiences of the Initiation candidates of the Mysteries of Hibernia.

How this Initiation stands in connection with the whole history of mankind, in the whole evolution of mankind, what it betokens for human evolution, and how far the whole experience had a still deeper meaning—in that, at the stage where I closed the last lecture, something like a vision of the Christ appeared before the pupil of Hibernia—this will be set before you in the next lecture.

I have related to you different things concerning the nature of the Hibernian Mysteries, and you saw in the last lecture that the peculiar path of evolution which men pursued on the island of Ireland led them to gain an insight, first of all, into what is possible to the human mind, into what the human mind can experience through its own inner activity. You must now consider how, through all the preparatory exercises which those about to be initiated had to go through, it was possible that as by magic, landscapes as they are usually spread out before human senses were conjured up before these senses. No religious or fanciful hallucinatory impressions were thus given, for that which man was accustomed to look upon appeared before the soul as from behind a veil, concerning which he knew very well something was behind. And it was the same in regard to the gazing into his own inner being in the case of the enchanted vision of the dreamlike summer landscape. The pupil was prepared beforehand to have Imaginations which were connected with that which he otherwise saw with his outer senses. But he really knew when he had these Imaginations that he was about to penetrate further by means of these Imaginations to something quite different.

I have shown you how the pupil penetrated through to the vision of the time before earthly existence, and to the time after earthly existence; by vision forwards to the time after death as far as the middle point between death and a new birth, and by vision backward s into the time which immediately preceded the descent to earth,—again to the middle point between death and a new birth. But something still further happened. Because the pupil had been led further to sink himself deeply into that which he had gone through, and because his soul was strengthened through the vision of the pre-earthly and of the post-earthly life, because he had gained insight into Nature dying and continually being re-born, because of all this he could with yet stronger inner power and energy sink himself into what had happened through the numbness, through his being taken up into world-spaces, through floating out into the blue Ether-distances, and again through what had taken place when he felt himself a personality only within his senses, when he so to speak received nothing through the rest of his whole being as man, but only received anything from existence through the eye, or in the auditory tract, or in the sensation of feeling, etc., when he thus became completely a sense-organ.

The pupil had learned to revive these conditions in himself with strong inner energy, and out of these conditions to allow that to come over him which worked a still further result. When all this was indicated to him, after he had gone through all that which I have described, quite voluntarily and inwardly to bring again before himself the condition of inner numbness, so that he felt, as it were, his own organism as a kind of mineral thing, that is to say, as something quite foreign to him, when he felt his external being, his bodily being, as a thing strange to him, and the soul, as it were, only floating around, ensheathing this mineral thing, then in the condition of consciousness which resulted he received a clear vision of the Moon-existence, which preceded that of the Earth.

You remember how I have described this Moon-existence in my Occult Science, and in many different lectures. That which has there been described arose in the consciousness of the pupil. It was actually present before him. This ancient Moon existence appeared to him as a planetary existence, actually at first only in a watery, in a fluid condition, but not like the water of today, rather I might say as if gelatinous, like something coagulated. And the pupil felt himself within it; he felt himself organized in this half-soft mass, and he felt the organization of the whole planet streaming out from his own organization.

But you must make clear to yourselves the difference between experience at that time and experience today. Today we feel ourselves to some extent bounded by our skin, and we say indeed that as men we are that which is inside the skin. It is of course a mighty mistake, for as soon as we consider that which is in the form of air in the man the foolishness is evident of feeling ourselves limited by the skin. I have often said: the volume of air which is within me was a little while ago not within me, and the volume of air which will soon be in me is outside. So that we only feel ourselves rightly today as men when we do not think ourselves, as regards the air, cut off from the outer world. We are everywhere where the outer air is; in fact there is no difference whether you have now a piece of sugar in your mouth and the next moment in your stomach, where it has gone a certain way, or whether a volume of air is out there this moment and next moment it is in your lungs. The piece of sugar goes its way through the mouth, the air also goes its way through the organs of air and breathing, and he who thinks this does not belong to him, should also think his mouth does not belong to him, but that his body begins with his stomach. So it is really nonsense for the present-day man to think he is contained within the limits of his skin.

But in the Moon-existence there was no possibility of thinking of oneself as enclosed within one's skin. Of such furniture as is around us, towards which we go and of which we take hold, there was none at that time. Everything that was there was a natural product. And if you stretched out such an organ as you had at that time, which may be compared with the finger of today, it was as if one could draw this finger until it disappeared, or an arm till it disappeared; one could make oneself quite thin and many other things. Today when you take hold of a table you do not feel as if the table belonged to you. If a man seized anything then, he simply felt it belonged to him, as the air-volume now belongs to him. So actually man's own organization was felt as only a piece of the whole planet-Moon-existence

All this arose before the consciousness of the Hibernian pupil. He received the impression that the gelatinous fluid was only a condition of the Moon-organization at a particular time. There were certain epochs in the Old Moon-organization when within the gelatinous material something arose which was physically much harder than our hard things today. It was not, however, mineral, as the present day emerald or corundum or diamond is mineral, it was just hard horny material. There was at that time nothing mineral in the present sense of crystallization or the like. That which was hard as a mineral was of a hard horny nature. It has such a structure that one saw it had been formed organically. Today we should not speak of the crystal formation of a cow's horn because we know that a cow's horn is what it is through organic agency. Similarly with deer or the like; all bone matter is the same. Mineral matter is different. But at that time there was a mineral-like substance built up out of organic life.

Those Beings who at that time partly went through their human stage, who have only to accomplish part of their human evolution during the earth-existence, are those individualities of whom I have spoken as the great wise primeval Teachers of humanity on earth, and who today find themselves in a colony on the moon.

All this appeared to the Hibernian pupil during the state of numbness. And when he had experienced all in the suitable manner, that is to say, in the way which seemed suitable to his Initiators, then he was directed to advance again, repeatedly to advance to causing the numbness to melt, to stream out into the Ether-distances, to that point where he could feel: The paths of the Heights bring me out into the distances of the blue Ether, even to the boundaries of space-existence.

Then when he had repeatedly gone through this experience, he felt all which was to be felt from the earth in his movement out towards the Ether-distances. But while he was moving towards the Ether-distances after the Heights had received him, and had brought him near the Ether-distances, he felt that there outside, as if at the boundary of the world of space, something pressed in to him which again permeated him, which we today should call the astral principle, something inwardly experienced, which united itself much more significantly, much more energetically with the human being of that time, though it could not be perceived as clearly as its counterpart can be perceived today. This astral element united itself with the human soul, only in a more energetic, more powerful, more living way than today. It may be compared with the way that a feeling would arise within the human inner being if a man were to expose himself to the in-streaming, refreshingly in-streaming sunlight to such an extent that the sunlight permeated his inner being with a vivifying element, enabling him to feel his organization right into each individual part. For if you only observe a little, you will indeed be able to feel that if you freely expose yourself to the sun, if you let the sun stream through you, but not in such a way that the sun becomes uncomfortable to your inner feeling; but if you expose yourself to the sun so that with a certain pleasure its light and heat pour on to your body and into your organism, then you will feel as if each individual organ felt slightly different from before. You come in fact into a condition in which you could inwardly give a description of yourself.

It is only through lack of power of observation in men today that such things are so little known. If there were not this lack of observation in man at the present day they would actually be able to give at least dreamlike indications of what I have shown you as to inner experience of the in-streaming sunlight. In earlier times the pupil was instructed differently from today concerning the interior of the human organism. Today corpses are dissected and from this study one makes anatomical maps. That does not require much attention, indeed it must be granted that many students do not bring much attention, but it does not demand much. But formerly the pupil was so instructed that he was placed in the sun, and was led to feel his internal parts in reaction to the pleasant in-streaming sunlight. Accordingly he could take note of his liver, stomach, etc. This inner relationship of man with the macrocosm is there if only the conditions are brought about. You may of course be blind, and yet through touch feel the form of an object. And so if one organ in your organism is made sensitive to another through attention to light, you may describe the internal organs so that at least you can get shadow-pictures of them in your consciousness. To a high degree it was implanted in the pupil of the Hibernian Mysteries that by the flowing out into the blue Ether-distance, by the flowing in of the astral light, he would not now pre-eminently feel himself, but he would feel in his consciousness a mighty world, a world of which he now said as follows: I live wholly in an element with other beings. This element is really nothing but Nature-goodness, for I feel streaming into me from all around out of this element (forgive that I use a mode of speech only possible in later times) out of this element in which I swim as a fish in water, but myself also only consisting in quite volatile imponderable elements, I feel how out of this planetary element from all sides comes this pleasant in-streaming. The pupil felt the astral light all around him streaming into him, forming and fashioning him. This element is pure Nature-goodness (thus he might have spoken) for from all around something is being given to me. I am really surrounded by pure goodness. It is goodness, but a Nature-goodness which is all around me. But this Nature-goodness is not only goodness, it is creative goodness. For it is that which at the same time with its powers causes me to exist, gives me form, and sustains me in so far as I swim, hover, move in this element. Thus the impressions which were produced were of a natural-moral character.

To compare with something of the present day we might say: If a man had a rose before him and could smell it and out of inner truthfulness and honesty said: “Divine goodness which is spread out in the whole earth-planet flows also into this rose, and because this rose communicated its essence to my organ of smell I smell the living divine goodness in the planet.” If a man today with inner honesty could say such a thing when inhaling the scent of the rose then he would experience something like a weak shadow of that which formerly, as complete life-element, was experienced by the individual man. And that was the experience of the sun-existence which preceded the Moon-existence. Thus the pupil could experience the Sun-existence and the Moon-existence, which preceded the existence of our earth.

And further, when the pupil had been led to it, to feel himself only in his senses, when he had experienced something like the stripping off of his whole organism, and lived only in the experience in the senses, so that he actually lived in his eye, in his auditory tract, in his whole sense of touch, then he perceived that which I have described in my Occult Science as the Saturn-existence, as the existence where man lived and moved in the heat-element, in the differentiated heat-element. It was as if he did not feel himself as flesh and blood, as bones and nerves, but merely as an organism of heat, of heat amidst other heat, as planetary Saturn-heat; he perceived heat when the outer heat was of a different degree from the inner heat. Moving in heat, living in heat, sensing heat against heat, this was the Saturn-existence.

And this experience was gone through by the pupil when he was drawn into his senses. These senses themselves were not so much differentiated as today. The perception of heat against heat, of life through heat, of life in heat was the most important thing. But there were moments when man, himself a heat-organism, approached another heat-organism or heat-mass, when, through the contact, he felt in himself something like a springing-up of flames; he was now in an element not merely of heat which streams and moves and surges—he was suddenly something like a flaming thing, also something like a moving sensation of taste, taste not only as on the tongue—that organ of course did not exist at that time—but taste which a man feels in himself, but which is kindled by contact with another body which also imparts something of itself. The Saturn-existence had become active in the pupil.

You see, therefore, that in the Hibernian Mysteries the pupil was led into the past existence of our own earth-planet. He learned to know Saturn, Sun, and Moon-existence as the successive metamorphoses of the earth-existence.

And then he was repeatedly stimulated to live through the experience which now led him into his own inner being, first, to experience again what I have described as the sensation of inner pressure, as if he were pressed together by the feeling of his own centre, as if the air in him became condensed, so that, if we would compare the condition with something corresponding to the experience of a man today, we could compare it with the feeling that he could not get his breath out, it pushed and pressed in on him on every side.

That was the first condition, and the pupil again, by external voluntary effort had to re-awaken it in his soul. And if he did this, if he actually came into the dream-condition of which he had earlier been capable, of dreaming in the waking-state of nature-existence as Summer landscape, if he came into this condition, then at a particular moment he had suddenly a quite peculiar experience. If I am to characterize this experience for you I must d o it in a somewhat roundabout way. Think then, as man of the present day, you come into a warm room; you feel the heat; you come out, and if it is 5 or 10 degrees below zero you feel the cold. You feel the difference between heat and cold, but you feel it bodily. You do not unite it with your soul. And as earth-man, when you come into a warm room, you do not always have the feeling: here in this room something has spread itself abroad like a great spirit which encircles me with love. You experience this heat as something bodily pleasant. You do not experience it as something for the soul. It is the same with the cold; you freeze, your body freezes; but you have not the feeling: out there, through particular climatic conditions, demons come in all directions towards you which whisper to you something so frosty that you are also cold in the soul. Physical heat is not at the same time something belonging to the soul, because you do not feel intensely the nature-soul experiences as earth-man with ordinary consciousness. As earth-man you can warm yourself in the friendship, in the love of another human being. You may feel chilled by his frostiness, or perhaps by his commonplace nature, but by such experiences we mean something belonging to the soul. Only think how little the physical earth-man of today is inclined to say when in summer he steps out into the hot sultry air: now the gods love me. Nor how little the man of today is inclined to say when he steps out into the wintry cold: now only those sylphs fly through the air who are frosty and commonplace in the sylph-world. Those are expressions which we do not hear at all today. Now you see, this sensation which I wish to indicate (this is why I said that I had to explain the thing, in a roundabout way), this sensation when the pupil experienced that inner feeling of pressure, resulted as a matter of course. All that he felt as heat he felt at the same time as soul-heat as well as physical heat. This was because with his consciousness he was transported into the Jupiter-existence, which will arise out of the earth-existence. For we shall only become Jupiter-men if we unite physical heat with soul-heat. As Jupiter-men we shall come to this, if we caress in love a human being, or it may be a child, we shall be to that child at the same time an actual pourer-forth of heat.

To pour forth love and heat will not be separated as now, we shall actually come to this that we shall pour forth from our souls into our surroundings the heat we experience.

Not indeed in this earth-world but transported into another world, was the pupil of the Hibernian Mysteries brought to this experience. Hence the Jupiter-existence was present to him, not of course, in physical earth-reality, but in a picture.

And the next advance was that the pupil felt so truly that inner distress of which I spoke yesterday, that he actually experienced the necessity of overcoming his own Ego, because otherwise it may be the source of evil.

If the pupil rightly caused this soul-conception to be present in himself, then something else arose in him. He did not only feel soul-heat and physical heat as one, but that which he felt as one, this soul-physical heat, began to shine. The mystery of the shining of light, of the shining of soul-light, arose for the pupil. Thus he was transported into that future when the earth will be changed into the Venus-planet, into the future Venus-planet.

And now when the pupil felt everything flowing together into his heart which he had experienced earlier, just as I described it to you yesterday, all that he had experienced in his soul, manifested itself at the same time as the experience of the planet. Man has a thought. The thought does not remain within the skin of the man. The thought begins to resound. The thought becomes Word. That which the man lives forms itself into Word. In the Vulcan-planet the Word spreads itself out. Everything in the Vulcan-planet is speaking living Being. Word sounds to Word. Word explains itself by Word. Word speaks to Word. Word learns to understand Word. Man feels himself as the World-understanding Word, as the Word-world understanding Word.

While this was present before the candidate for Initiation in Hibernia, he knew himself to be in the Vulcan existence, in the last metamorphosed condition of the earth-planet.

So you see that the Hibernian Mysteries really belong to those which we are entitled to call in Spiritual Science the Great Mysteries. For that into which the pupils were initiated gave them a survey, an outlook over human pre-earthly and post-earthly life. It gave them at the same time a survey over Cosmic life, into which man is woven, out of which in the course of time he is born. The human being learned thus to know the Microcosm, that is, to know himself, as spirit-soul-bodily Being in connection with the Macrocosm. He learned also to know the coming into being, the weaving, the arising and passing away, and the changing, metamorphosing itself of the Macrocosm. These Hibernian Mysteries were great Mysteries.

And they reached their full flower in the period which preceded the Mystery of Golgotha. But there was this peculiarity in the great Mysteries, that in these great Mysteries the Christ was spoken of as the One who was to come, just as later men spoke of the Christ as of Him who had gone through events in the past. And actually when after the first Initiation, when the pupil leaving the Temple was led before the image of the Christ, they wished to show him: The whole trend of earth-evolution leads towards the Event of Golgotha. At that time it was presented as an Event which was to come.

There was in fact upon this island which was later to go through so many trials, a Centre of the Great Mysteries, a Centre of Christian Mysteries before the Mystery of Golgotha, in which in the right way, the spiritual gaze of a man living before the Mystery of Golgotha was directed towards the Mystery of Golgotha.

And then, when the Mystery of Golgotha took place, when over in Palestine, the wonderful events came to pass which we describe as the experience of Christ Jesus on Golgotha and its surroundings, while these wonderful events came to pass in Palestine, great festivals were held within the Hibernian Mysteries, and within their community, i.e. by the people who belonged to the Hibernian Mysteries. And that which came to pass in actual fact in Palestine, was portrayed in pictures on the island of Hibernia in ways a hundred-fold, though the picture was as a memory of the past. They experienced in pictures the Mystery of Golgotha contemporaneously on the island of Hibernia, while the Mystery of Golgotha came to pass historically, in Palestine. When later, in temples and churches, the Mystery of Golgotha was experienced pictorially, was shown in pictures to the people, then these were pictures which recalled something which had taken place on the earth, which were drawn out of the ordinary consciousness as a kind of historic memory. These pictures existed on the island of Hibernia before they could be produced from historic memory of the past, but as they only could be produced out of the Spirit itself. On the island of Hibernia that was spiritually seen which took place before the bodily eye in Palestine, at the beginning of our era. And so, on the island of Hibernia, humanity actually experienced the Mystery of Golgotha spiritually. And this indicates the greatness of all that went forth later from the island of Hibernia, for the rest of the civilized world, but which vanished in later time.

I beg you now to notice the following. He who studies only external history will find much that is splendid, beautiful, that lifts up the heart, that illumines the mind, when he looks back historically into the ancient world of the East, when he looks back historically into ancient Greece, into ancient Rome. He may experience many things of this kind if he goes on, let us say, to the time of Charles the Great, and through the Middle Ages. But just notice how meager historical records were in that age, a couple of centuries after the rise of Christianity and approximately to the ninth or tenth post-Christian centuries. Examine historical works yourselves. In all the older genuine historical works you will find everywhere only short accounts, very little material for these centuries.—Then the material begins to be set out more fully. Certainly later historians who are, as it were, ashamed for the sake of their profession to disperse their material so badly, because they cannot relate what they do not know, invent all sorts of fancy constructions which are now placed in these centuries. But that is all nonsense. If you honestly represent external history it is somewhat thin as regards historical records during that period when ancient Rome fell, and when devastating swarms of migratory peoples took place, which were really not so fearfully striking outwardly as men of today represent them, which were indeed only striking compared with the quiet of earlier and later times. For if you only consider today, or perhaps in the time before the War had counted how many people journeyed from Russia, let us say, to Switzerland each year, you would find they were more in number than during the times of the migrations of peoples through these same regions of Europe. All these things are relative. So that if we would speak in the style which the historians lavish upon the migrations of the peoples, we should have to say: up to the time of the late War the whole of Europe was in continual migration. The emigration to America was infinitely greater than the streams of the peoples' migrations. We do not make this clear to ourselves. Historic records are meager during the time that is called the period of migration of peoples, and in the period which followed that migration. Very little is known about this period. Very little can be described of what took place in this neighbourhood, for example, or in France, or in Germany. But this was the very time when the echoes of that which was seen in the Hibernian Mysteries spread over Europe, even though only in a weak echo, the very time when the effects, the impulses of the great Hibernian Mysteries streamed into civilization.

And now two great streams met, one stream of which we may say—for all that I am saying now is simply a relation of facts, not in any way letting fall a shadow of sympathy or antipathy but simply describing actual history—two streams met, one which in a roundabout way came from the East through Greece and Rome. This movement which took into account the endowment or talents more and more breaking in upon humanity, depending merely on the power of reason and the senses, occupied itself with that which existed as historic memory of externally visible, externally experienced events. From Palestine the news spread through Greece and Rome, which was taken up by men into their religious life, the news of what had taken place in the physical-sense World through the God Christ.

This reckoned upon the human understanding, which by this time was dependent upon what today we call the ordinary consciousness bound up with the reason and the senses. This stream spread in the most magnificent way. But it finally overwhelmed that stream which came over from the West, from Hibernia, which as a last echo of the ancient instinctive earth-wisdom relied on the ancient treasures of wisdom of humanity, which were now to be illuminated by the new consciousness. Something spread over Europe from Hibernia which did not take into account illumination with the wisdom founded on sense perception, or proofs which could demonstrate that which had taken place historically. But cults, wisdom teachings as Hibernian cults, Hibernian wisdom teachings spread abroad which were based on illumination from the Spiritual world, from the Spiritual world even at the identical time when as in the case of the Mystery of Golgotha, the event was taking place in physical reality on another spot of earth. The physical reality of Palestine was seen spiritually in Hibernia.

But that which was based only on physical reality over-shadowed that which came from the spiritual exaltation of men, from the spiritual deepening of the inner nature of man, from the spiritual permeation of the soul of man. And gradually out of a necessity, of which I have often spoken from other points of view, gradually that which appealed to the sense-physical existence gained the upper hand over that which derived from spiritual insight. The news of the Redeemer living on earth in a physical body, gained the upper hand over the wonderful imaginative pictures which came over from Hibernia and which could be presented in cults, over the magnificent imaginative pictures which announced the Redeemer as a spiritual Being, and which paid no attention in the presentation of their cult, in their descriptions, to the fact that it was also a historic event. For least of all were they able to take this fact into consideration in the period when it was not yet a historic event, for the rites were already instituted before the Mystery of Golgotha.

And the time dawned when men more and more were only to be reached through that which was to be seen physically, when men, one might say, naturally came to this, that things were no longer accepted as true which were not founded on physical sight. Thus wisdom which came over from Hibernia was no longer grasped in its reality. And the art which came from Hibernia could no longer be felt in its Cosmic truth. Thus there arose more and more not a Hibernian knowledge, but a knowledge which only had to do with the external sense world, not a Hibernian art, but an art—and even Rafael's art is no other—an art which needed the physical-sense world as model, whereas the Hibernian art was founded on the direct representation of the spiritual, and all that belongs to the spirit.

Thus a time came when in a certain sense, a veil of darkness was drawn over the spiritual life, in which men boasted about reason and the senses only, and founded philosophies which showed in some way how reason and the senses could approach existence, or truth, or attain to truth.

Then there came about that amazing fact that men were no longer accessible to spiritual influences. And where could it be seen more clearly, I would say, how the consciousness of men was no longer accessible to spiritual influences, than in that which was given to men—the way in which the Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz was given to mankind. I explained this some time ago in the periodical Die Drei, Vols. 3, 4, 5, 1927. There I called attention to the remarkable thing which happened regarding the Chemical Wedding. Valentine Andreae is the physical writer of this Chemical Wedding. This Chemical Wedding was written down in the year just before the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War. But no one who knows the biography of Valentine Andreae would not doubt that Valentine Andreae, who became later an orthodox pastor, and wrote other books full of unction, wrote the Chemical Wedding. It is pure nonsense to believe that Valentine Andreae wrote the Chemical Wedding. Just compare the Chemical Wedding, or The Organisation of the World, or the other writings of Valentine Andreae—physically it was the same personality—with the greasy unctuousness, fat oiliness of that which Pastor Valentine Andreae, who only bears the same name, wrote in his later life. It is a most noteworthy phenomenon. Here is a young man who has scarcely completed his school education, who writes down such things as the Organisation of the World, as the Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz, and we have to exert ourselves to fathom the inner meaning of these writings. He himself understands nothing of it, for he shows us that later. He becomes an unctuous pastor. It is the same man! And we only need to examine this phenomenon to find it a reasonable explanation which I have given, that the Chemical Wedding was not written by a human being, or only in so far written by a human being as Napoleon's secretary, constantly full of anxiety, wrote his letters. But Napoleon was always a man who stood on his feet, with his legs firmly on the ground, was in fact a physical personality. He who wrote the Chemical Wedding was not a physical personality. He made use of this secretary, who later became the oily pastor, Valentine Andreae.

Think of this wonderful event, just preceding the Thirty Years' War—a young man, quite a young man, lends his hand to a spiritual Being, who writes down such a thing as the Chemical Wedding. And that which comes to light in this case only, in a particular example often happened at that time. Only things are not so well known or preserved. That which above all was important for mankind at that time was given to men in such a way that they were unable to grasp it with their reason. This was the spirituality flowing forth, which still revealed itself to men, which men themselves could set down, but could no longer experience.

Thus in those days when mere empty pages filled the history books, in that time humanity lived, I would say, in two streams, in one stream which proceeds from the physical world below, when men more and more only believe in that which reason and the senses say to them, but above, continually, there is to be found a spiritual revelation made manifest through men, but not understood by men. And to the most characteristic examples of this spiritual revelation belonged such things as the Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz.

But all this revelation went in spite of everything through human heads, even though these human heads did not understand it. It went through human heads, became feebler and distorted. Fine poetry, grand poetry became such murmuring and babbling as the verses in the Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz often are. Nevertheless, they are revelations of something magnificent, mighty macrocosmic images, mighty experiences majestically arising, between man and the macrocosm. If one reads the Chemical Wedding with the insight of today, one learns to understand these images of the Chemical Wedding; they explain themselves, for they are coloured by the brain through which they have passed, and behind them the grandiose element appears.

Such things are a proof that that which men once experienced has continued to live on in the sub-conscious. It was so undoubtedly in the first period of the devastating Thirty Years' War. In the first half of the 17th century there flowed in that which was great, majestic spiritual truth. Only the Mystics preserve the impress made by it on the mind. But the real substance, the spiritual substance is quite lost. Reason above all conquers, reason prepares the age of freedom. Today we look back over these things, we gaze back on the Hibernian Mysteries I would say, with a truly deepened inner soul-life, for they are in very truth the last great Mysteries, those last great Mysteries through which human and cosmic secrets could express themselves. And when today we search into these secrets again, then do these Hibernian Mysteries appear to us truly great.

But we cannot really fathom them if we have not first searched into these matters in an independent way. And even when we have investigated them in an independent way, something peculiar arises. If in the Akashic Record one approaches the images of these Hibernian Mysteries, then one experiences something which works in a repelling way. It is as if one were held back by some force, as if one could not approach with the soul. And the nearer one approaches, the more does that obscure itself towards which one would hasten in soul, and one passes into a state of soul-bewilderment. One has to work through this soul-bewilderment. One can do nothing else than vivify in oneself that which one already knows of as resembling it, that which has been achieved and discovered by oneself. And one realizes why that is so. We see that indeed these Hibernian Mysteries were indeed the last echo of an old wisdom given to mankind by the Divine Spiritual Powers, which, however, in the age when the Hibernian Mysteries sank down into the shadow-life were at the same time spiritually surrounded with a thick rampart, so that the human being cannot passively penetrate them, cannot passively gaze into them, so that he cannot approach them unless he has awakened in himself spiritual activity, and has thus become in the right way a man of modern times. I would say, the approach to the Hibernian Mysteries was closed at that time so that men are not able to approach the Mysteries in the old way, so that they are compelled to experience in the activity of their own consciousness that which in the epoch of freedom must be found inwardly by man. No longer through a historical nor even through a clairvoyant historical vision of ancient, marvelously great secrets, may he reach these secrets, but he may enter this path only through his own inner activity.

Herewith it is most markedly indicated in regard to the Mysteries of Hibernia, that a new age begins in the epoch in which these Mysteries sink into the shadow-land; but they may be seen even today in their whole glory and majesty by the soul-being who is sustained by inner freedom. For through real inner activity we can approach them, we can conquer that which beats us back, a desire to bewilder us, which for the soul obstructs that which down to these latest times revealed itself to the candidates of the great ancient Mysteries of the former wisdom, instinctive indeed, but none the less a high spiritual wisdom, which once poured itself over humanity on the earth as a primal force of the soul. The most beautiful, the most significant memorials in later times to the primal wisdom of men, to the primal grace of the Divine Spiritual Beings, which reveals itself in the primal conditions of humanity, the most beautiful soul-spiritual memorials of this time are those images which can unveil themselves to us when we direct our gaze to the Mysteries of Hibernia.

Let us once again call to mind the real significance. of the fact that the knowledge and truths expressed in the Mysteries of Hibernia had been, in a manner of speaking, dimmed; that means that they could not develop any further activity in their journey towards central Europe and the East; and in the place of a spiritual approach even in matters of religion, physical perception, or at least a tradition based on this appeared.

Let us again call to mind that Image which appeared at the end of our last consideration. We pointed to the Being of Christ in the Mysteries of Hibernia. We indicated also that epoch in which the Mystery of Golgotha took place. There, in Hibernia, were the Initiates with their pupils; and there, without any means for the physical perception of the Mystery of Golgotha, without any possibility of information concerning this Mystery coming across to them, we find that at the same time in Ireland the Initiates established a universal ceremony, because they were quite clear from their insight that the Mystery of Golgotha was taking place simultaneously in an external way.

Now for these Initiates and their pupils in the Mysteries of Hibernia, they had of necessity to experience a physical reality, a sensible event, but only in a spiritual way. It was not necessary, for their way of thinking, and the manner of knowledge then customary in Hibernia to have more than the Spiritual in the physical world.

It must be clearly understood, however, that in Hibernia the Spiritual was paramount. In all kinds of secret streams of spiritual life that which had originated in Hibernia was brought over to central Europe, through the British Isles, through Brittany, through what is now Holland and Belgium, and even through the Alsace of today. Even though not present in the general civilization, yet, in the first centuries of Christian development, we find here and there in all the regions mentioned single individualities able to understand what had come over from the Mysteries of Hibernia, but, as we have said, this was not to be found in the general civilization of Europe. One must approach these things with an inner longing for knowledge, in order to find in the first Christian centuries those fairly numerous personalities. In the later centuries, from the 8th and 9th to the 15th and 16th centuries such personalities became rarer and rarer; personalities able to gather around them a small number of pupils through whom, in the silent places far removed from the world and its civilization, that which had been initiated in western Europe, in Hibernia, could be carried further.

In general, there spread over Europe that for which spiritual perception is not required, that which could be linked on to the mere historical tradition, which simply related the physical events which had taken place in Palestine at the beginning of our era. From this stream there proceeded that element which gradually developed more and more, which reckoned only with that which transpired in physical life. Less and less did humanity in general divine what a colossal contradiction lies in the fact that the mystery of Golgotha, which is really only comprehensible by means of the deepest spiritual life, is now based simply on an external figure, perceptible physically; this became for a time the necessary course of development of civilization in Europe.

Fundamentally, all this had been gradually prepared over a long time, but it could only come about because a very great deal of the old Mystery-knowledge, even such as still existed in Greece, had been forgotten.

These Mysteries of Greece were divided into two classes; one of these busied itself with guiding man's mind towards the spiritual world, towards the actual guidance and direction of the world in spirit, while the other investigated the mysteries of nature and that which rules in nature, especially the forces and beings connected with the powers of the earth. A great number of candidates were initiated into both kinds of mysteries. Of these it was said that they had knowledge and had been initiated into the Mysteries of the Father, the Mysteries of Zeus, and also that they had been admitted into the Mysteries of the Mother, the Mysteries of Demeter. When we look back into those times we find a far-reaching spiritual perception, though still somewhat abstract, into the highest regions, and side by side with this, a conception of nature which was capable of descending into the depths. Above all, we find in Greece that which is of special significance—the union of both Mysteries.

Concerning this union of both Mysteries we see that which today is but little noticed; the fact that man carries certain external substances of nature in his being while certain other substances of nature he does not carry in his being; this was observed and studied in the very deepest sense, in the Chthonic Mysteries in Ancient Greece. You know that man has iron in his being, as part of his organization. He also carries other metals within him, calcium, sodium, magnesium, and so on; but there are other metals which he does not carry within him. If we were to try and find these metals within by means of ordinary scientific methods, if one analysed the substances in man, then by means of this external investigation, we should find no lead, no copper, no quicksilver, no tin, no silver and no gold within him.

That was the great riddle which occupied those undergoing initiation into the Greek Mysteries, and the apex of this riddle was reached in the question: How does it come about that man carries iron in himself, that he carries sodium magnesium, and other substances which we can also find in outer nature, but does not, for instance carry lead or tin in his being? They were deeply convinced that man is a small world, a microcosm; yet it would appear that man did not carry in his being these other metals, lead, tin, quicksilver, silver, gold and so on.

We may truly say that the older candidates for initiation in Greece were of the opinion that this was only apparently the case; for they were deeply permeated by the knowledge that man is a real microcosm; that means that everything which is to be found in the cosmos he also carries in his own being.

Let us look for a moment into the mind of a man about to be initiated in Greece. He would be instructed somewhat as follows: (and here of course I must compose into a few sentences that which extended over long periods in the course of this instruction) he was instructed by being told the following: Observe how the earth today conceals iron everywhere in itself; iron is also in man. Once upon a time, when the earth had not yet become earth, when it existed in a previous planetary condition, the earth which was then Old Moon, or perhaps even Old Sun also concealed in itself lead, tin and so on: and all the beings which had shared in the previous construction of the earth also had a part in these metals and their forces, just as man today shares in the forces of iron. But with those transformations which the ancient shape of the earth underwent iron alone remained in such a degree of strength and density that man could permeate his being with it. The other metals which we have just named are also contained in the earth, but they are no longer of such a consistency that man can directly permeate himself with them; they are to be found in an infinitely rarefied condition in the whole cosmic space which surrounds man.

If I examine a small piece of lead I see before me the well-known grayish-white metal, which has a definite density. One can grasp it. But this same lead which appears in the lead-ores of the earth exists in an infinitely fine ramification in the whole cosmic space surrounding man, and there it has its significance. It has this significance there, that it radiates its forces everywhere, even where there is apparently no lead and man comes into contact with these forces of the lead, not through his physical body, but through his etheric body; because outside the lead-ores of the earth lead exists in such a rarefied fine condition that it can work only on the etheric body of man. On man's etheric body the lead works in this condition of infinite ramification extended over the whole of cosmic space.

The pupil of those ancient Greek Chthonic Mysteries learnt that, just as is the case today with the earth, which is infinitely rich in iron, and I a planet concerning which the inhabitant of another planet could say: “That planet is rich in iron,” (the only other planet rich in iron being Mars); just as the earth is rich in iron, so Saturn is rich in lead. What iron is for the earth, lead is for Saturn; and one has to assume—this the student of the Chthonic Mysteries in Greece learned—that once upon a time, when the separation of Saturn from the common planetary body of the earth took place as described in my Outline of Occult Science—when Saturn separated from this cosmic body, this fine division with reference to lead took place. One can say that Saturn took the lead out with him, as it were and held it through his own planetary life-force, through his own planetary warmth in such a condition that he can permeate the whole planetary system to which our earth belongs with this infinitely finely distributed lead.

You must therefore imagine the earth, and in the distances Saturn filling the whole planetary system with its finely distributed lead, and this fine lead substance works on man. You can still find traces that this was taught to those about to be initiated in ancient Greece, and that they learnt to understand how this lead worked. They knew that our sense organs, especially the organ of the eye would take the whole of man's being into its own sphere, and not allow man to come to self-reliance. Man would only be able to see, he would not be able to think about what he had seen. He would be unable to detach himself from what he saw and say: “I see.” He would be over-powered by sight, as it were, unless this effect of lead existed in the Cosmos. It is this activity of lead which makes it possible for man to be independent in himself, which places him as an ego as regards receptivity to the outer world, which lives in him. These lead-forces first enter the etheric body of man, and from the etheric body they also impregnate the physical body, in a certain sense. Thereby man receives the capacity of memory; the power of memory.

It was always a great moment when a pupil, such as the Greek pupil of the Chthonic Mysteries, after having learnt all this, was led on to what then followed. He was shown with all possible ceremonial the substance of lead, and then his mind was directed towards Saturn. The relationship of Saturn with earthly lead was brought before his soul, and then he was told: “The lead which thou seest is concealed in the earth, for in its present state the earth is not in a condition to give the lead a form in which it can work in man; but Saturn with its very different condition of warmth, with its inner life-forces scatters lead in planetary space. Thereby thou art an independent being, possessing the power of memory. Just think, thou art a human being only through the fact that today thou dost know still what thou knewest ten or twenty years ago. Just think how the human part of thee would suffer if thou didst not carry within thee what thou didst experience ten or twenty years ago. Thy ego-forces would be shattered unless this power of memory were present in full measure. This is due to what streams to thee from that distant Saturn. It is the force which has come to rest in lead in the earth, and which can now no longer work upon man in its quiescent state. Thus it is the Saturn lead-forces which enable thee to consolidate thy thoughts, so that they can arise later out of the depths of the soul, and thou canst thus live a continuous life in the external world, and not merely in a transient way. Thou owest it to the Saturn lead-forces that thou dost not merely look around thee today and then forget the objects thou beholdest, but canst retain the memory of them in thy soul. Thou canst retain in thy soul what thou didst experience twenty years ago, and canst cause this to live again; thou canst so form thy inner life as to reproduce what thou didst experience in thy surroundings at any particular time of thy life.”

It was a powerful impression that the pupil received, when with the greatest ceremony this knowledge was brought before him seriously and without sentimentality. He then learnt to understand: If it were only these lead-forces which were active in giving man the power of his ego, the power of memory, he would be completely separated from the Cosmos. If the Saturn-forces alone existed in man he would indeed be able to retain in his memory what he saw with his physical eyes, and preserve this throughout his earthly life; but he would be divorced from the Cosmos. He would become, as it were, a hermit in his earth-life in spite of being inspired by Saturn with the power of memory. The pupil then learnt that against the Saturn forces another force had to be set up, the force of the moon. Let us suppose that these two forces confront one another in such a way that the force of Saturn and the force of the moon, approaching from opposite sides, but flowing into each other, descend to the earth and to man on the earth. Now Saturn takes from man what he receives from the moon, and what man receives from Saturn is taken by the moon. So, just as the earth has in iron a force which man can transmute within himself, a force which Saturn has in lead, that same force is possessed by the moon in silver.

Now even the silver, as it exists in the earth, has already attained a condition in which it cannot enter directly into man; but the whole sphere which includes the moon is actually permeated by finely divided silver, and the moon, especially when its light comes from the constellation of Leo, works in such a way that man, through these silver-forces of the moon receives the opposing activity of the lead-forces of Saturn; he is therefore not divorced or cut off from the Cosmos, in spite of the fact that he is beneficently inspired with the forces of memory by the Cosmos. It was a moment of special ceremony when the Greek pupil was led to see this opposition of Saturn and the moon., In the sanctity of the night it was made clear to the pupil: “Look up to Saturn surrounded by his rings; to him thou owest the fact that thou art an independent being. Now look towards the other side, to the silver-radiating moon. To her thou owest the fact that thou art able to bear the Saturn forces without being cut off from the rest of the Cosmos.”

In this way, based directly upon the union of man with the cosmos, that teaching was given in Greece which later on we find as a caricature in what is called astrology. At that time it was a true wisdom, for then man saw in a star not merely the speck or point of light above him; he saw in the star the spiritual living being, and the human being of the earth was seen in union with this spiritual living being. Men then had a natural science which reached up into the heavens, and extended right out into cosmic spaces. When the pupil had received such insight, and such illumination had entered deeply into his soul, he was lead into the real Mysteries of Eleusis. You have heard what took place in these Mysteries, in my description of other Mysteries; for instance, the Mysteries of Hibernia. The pupil was led before two statues. One of these statues represented to him a fatherly divinity, that fatherly divinity which was surrounded by the signs of the planets and the sun, represented to him shining Saturn, but so radiant that the pupil was reminded of the fact: That is the radiance of lead from the cosmos—just as the moon reminded him of the silver radiance. And this same thing happened with each single planet. Thus, in that statue which represented the father principle there appeared all those mysteries which ray down to earth from the planetary environment, all that which was related to the single metals of the earth, which, however, had now become unusable within the earth as regards man's inner being.

Then the pupil was told the following: Here stands the Father of the world before Thee. The Father of the world carries the lead in Saturn, in Jupiter he bears tin, in Mars the iron, which is so closely related with the earth-being but in quite another condition, in the sun, the radiating gold, in Venus, the radiating streaming copper, in Mercury the radiating quicksilver, and in the moon the radiating silver. Thou dost only bear within thee that part of the metals which thou wast able to assimilate from the planetary conditions which the earth had once upon a time gone through. In its present condition thou canst only assimilate the iron. As an earthly human being thou art not complete. In that which the Father, standing before thee shows thee in the metals which cannot today exist within thee in thy earthly existence, but which thou must take up from the cosmos, in that thou hast another part of thy being; when thou dost look upon thyself as a human being who has gone through the planetary transformations of the earth, then art thou really a complete human being. Here on the earth thou art only a part human being; the other part the Father carries round his head and in his arms before thee. It is only that which stands before thee, combined with that which he bears which makes thee man. Thou standest on the earth, but that earth was not always as it is today. If the earth had been always as it is today thou couldst not dwell upon it as a human being. For the earth carries today in itself, even in a lifeless condition, the lead of Saturn, the tin of Jupiter, the iron of Mars (though in that other state) the gold of the sun, the silver of the moon, the copper of Venus, and the quicksilver of Mercury. It carries these things within it. But these metals which the earth carries in its body today are no more than a memory of their former existence, of the way in which, once upon a time silver lived during the Moon-existence of the earth, in which gold lived during the Sun-existence, only a reminder of the way in which lead lived during the Saturn-existence of the earth. That which thou hast today in the dense metallic ores of lead, tin, iron, gold, copper, quicksilver, silver, with the exception of the iron which thou really knowest, and which is not the iron within the earth, for that belongs to the Mars nature, that which thou now seest in these dense compact metals—these metals poured themselves out on to the earth in a quite different condition. These metals as thou knowest them today on the earth are the corpses of the erstwhile metal-beings. The corpse has remained of that metal-being which during the Saturn time and later in a different stage, during the Moon time of the earth played a part in their ancient form. Tin played a part in a combination with gold during the Sun time of the earth in a very different condition. And if thou dost see these things in the Spirit, then will this statue become for thee in all that it brings before thee the true Father statue.

And in the Spirit, as in a real vision the statue of the true Mysteries of Eleusis became living and handed to the female statue which stood beside it that which the metals at that time were. In the vision seen by the pupil, the female statue received that which was the metals in their former shape, and surrounded it with what the earth in becoming earth could give out of its own being.

The pupil saw this wonderful process, this wonderful happening. There radiated forth out of the hand of the Father-statue the metallic mass, as the pupil now saw in a symbolic way; and that which the earth then was, with its chalk and stone-formation encountered that which streamed in and surrounded this in-streaming metal-element with earthly substance.

The way in which the hand stretching out in love from the Mother-statue received the metal-forces which were offered by the Father-statue made a great and mighty impression on the pupil, for he then saw how the Cosmos worked together with the earth in the course of aeons of time, and he learnt to feel in the right way what the earth was offering.

Look around at the metallic nature in the earth today. It is crystallized and surrounded with a kind of crust which comes from the earth. The metal-nature streamed in from the cosmos, and that which comes from the earth received lovingly that which streamed in from the cosmos. You see this everywhere if you go to metal-mines and take an interest in them. That which received the metal was called the Mother. The most important of these earthly substances which, as it were, came forward to meet the heavenly metal-element in order to take it up were called “the Mothers.”

That is only one aspect of “The Mothers” to whom Faust descends. He descends at the same time into those pre-earthly periods of the earth, in order to see there how the Mother-earth takes into herself what is given by the Father-element in the cosmos.

Through all this there was stirred up in the pupil of the Eleusinian Mysteries, in his inner being, a feeling of being one with the Cosmos. It was an inner recognition in his heart of that which is in reality the nature-processes of the earth.

If the man of today observes these processes, these products of nature, he finds everything dead, there is nothing but a corpse; and if we occupy ourselves with physics or chemistry, are we doing with nature really anything else in our science than what the anatomist does when he dissects the corpse in the anatomical theatre when he has only the dead aspect of that which was intended for life? Thus in our science and physics we cut into living nature.

To the Greek pupil was given a different natural science, a natural science of the living, which showed him our present lead as the corpse of lead. He had to go back to the times when lead lived, and in that way the mysterious relation of man with the cosmos, the mysterious connection of man with all that existed around him on the earth was made clear.

When the pupil had undergone all these things, when the Father-statue and the Mother-statue had sunk deeply into his soul, bringing before his soul the two opposing forces of the Cosmos and of the earth, he was led in Ancient Greece into the very holiest of all. There he had before him the picture of a female figure suckling at her breast a Child, and he was finally led to the understanding of the Word: “That is the God Jacchos [originally translated as Jakos], Who is to come in the future.”

In this way the Greek disciple learned to understand the Mystery of Christ in a pre-Christian period; again it was in a spiritual way that the Christ was placed before those to be initiated into the Mysteries of Eleusis. In that time, however, he had to learn of the Christ only as a future Appearance, as One Who was still a Child, a cosmic Child, Who must first grow up in the Cosmos. Those about to be initiated, who were taught to look towards the end, towards the goal of earth-evolution were called Tellists.

Now there came a very important turning-point, which is expressed very dearly and even historically in the transition from Plato to Aristotle. It is remarkable that, in the evolution of this Greek civilisation, as the fourth century began, this first transition towards the abstract appeared. This fact is exemplified in the following scene which took place between Plato and Aristotle, at a time when Plato was very old, and really at the end of his earthly career. I must of course clothe in words what naturally occurred in a much more complicated way. Plato said to Aristotle somewhat as follows: “Many things I have told you and my other pupils may not have seemed correct to you, but what I have told you is really an extract of the most ancient holy Mystery-Wisdom. Human beings will, however, in the course of their evolution acquire such a form and such an inner Organisation, which will gradually lead them to something certainly higher than we now possess but this will at the same time make it impossible for them to accept natural science in the way it is presented to the Greeks.” Plato made this clear to Aristotle. “Therefore, I will withdraw myself for a time” said Plato, “and will leave you to yourself. In the world of thought, for which you are so especially endowed, and which will become the thought-world of humanity for many centuries, try to build up in thoughts what you have learnt here in my school.” So Plato and Aristotle separated, and Plato therewith fulfilled, as commanded, a high spiritual mission through Aristotle.

I am obliged to describe this scene in this way; but if you look in the history books, you will also find this scene described, and I will now tell you how it is there described: “Aristotle was always a headstrong pupil of Plato; so that Plato once said that though Aristotle was a gifted pupil yet he was like a horse that was trained by someone and then kicked its trainer with its hoof. That which took place between Aristotle and Plato led as time went on to Plato becoming annoyed and withdrawing from Aristotle. He returned no more into the Academy to teach therein.” That is the account given in the history books.

This narrative is in the history books; the other which I have just related is the truth and bears within it an impulse toward something very significant. For there were two kinds of writings of Aristotle. The one contained a remarkable natural science, the natural science of Eleusis, which came by way of Plato to Aristotle. The other contained the thoughts, the abstract thoughts which were also given to Aristotle by Plato from out of the Eleusinian Mysteries for the accomplishment of his mission.

That which Aristotle actually had to give also followed a two-fold path. We have his so-called logical writings, those logical writings which drew forth the most weighty thoughts from the ancient Eleusinian Mystery wisdom. These writings containing, less of natural science, Aristotle gave to his pupil Theophrastus, and through him and in other ways they came through Greece and Rome and formed the content of the wisdom taught throughout the Middle Ages to those leading minds in civilisation—the teachers of philosophy in Central Europe.

That which came about in the way I described in the last lecture, because the Mystery-wisdom of Hibernia had to be rejected, and men had simply to link on to what was tradition, tradition recording the events which took place at the beginning of our own era, this united with that which was separated from the wisdom of Plato by Aristotle, the wisdom of the Eleusinian Mysteries. The natural science which still carried within it the spirit of the Chthonic Mysteries and which had flowed into the Eleusinian Mysteries was a natural science which extended to the heavens, and soared out to the wide spaces of the cosmos to seek explanation of the earth from thence. For this natural science the time was past in Greece. As much as could be saved of this natural science was saved by Alexander becoming the pupil of Aristotle, who then undertook his journeys into Asia, and did everything possible to introduce this Aristotelian natural science to the East to extend it eastward. That then passed over into the Jewish and Arabian schools. From thence it came across from Africa to Spain, and there in a filtered form it influenced certain human beings in Central Europe. Theophrastus had given his version of the teachings of Aristotle to the theological teachers of the Middle Ages. Alexander the Great had carried his—the other version of Aristotle—over into Asia. That Eleusinian wisdom which came, but in infinite dilution, through Africa into Spain, shone out here and there in the Middle Ages, and notwithstanding the general standard of culture, was cultivated in certain monasteries and lived on under the surface. For instance, we meet with it in mystical form as brought down to posterity in Basilius Valentinus. On the surface there prevailed that culture of which I spoke to you in the last lecture. In this culture that which it was still possible to teach at the time of Aristotle was not to be found—that Christ must really be recognized and known.

The third picture, the female form who carries at her breast the Child, the Jacchos-Child, must also be understood; but that which should bring the understanding of this third figure was still to come in the evolution of humanity. That must come through certain relationships which I have explained to you. This was made clear to Alexander the Great by Aristotle, not in writing, but through circumstances such as I have just described.

So we see how in the bosom of time there lies the demand to understand in its original reality what has been so beautifully put before the world by the Christian painters; the Mother with the Child at her breast; but which was not fully understood either in the Madonna of Raphael, or in the eastern icons. It still awaits understanding.

Something of what is necessary to acquire such understanding will be discussed in the lectures to be given here; and in the next lecture I will describe the way along which many deeply occult secrets traveled from Arabia towards Europe. This will help to place before your souls a certain historical phenomenon, and in the lectures which are to form the basis of the historical evolution of humanity, and which will be given to the delegates at Christmas I will endeavour to put before you at the proper place the significance of the journeys of Alexander the Great in connection with the teachings of Aristotle.