The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Like two mighty pillars of the spirit have the annual festivals of Christmas and Easter been placed by the Christian world within the course of the year, itself a symbol of the course of human life. On these spiritual pillars standing before the human soul in its contemplation are inscribed the two great mysteries of mankind's physical existence. We must regard them very differently from the way we regard other events in the course of our physical life.

It is true that a supersensible element reaches into this physical life through our sense observation and our intellectual judgments, through the content of our feeling and will. In certain instances it proclaims itself clearly as supersensible—when, for example, Christian feeling undertakes to symbolize it in the festival of Pentecost. With Christmas and Easter, on the other hand, we must look at two events in earthly life that in external appearance would seem perhaps to be completely physical events; and yet, in contrast to all other physical events, they do not—indeed, they cannot by their very nature—present themselves as simply physical events. We can observe human physical life as we observe nature, perceiving with our senses the external manifestation of the spirit. But we can never observe the two boundary events of human life, not even just their physical occurrence, without confronting through physical perception itself their tremendous riddle, their profound mystery. These are the events of birth and death. In the life of Christ Jesus, and in our thoughts of Christmas and Easter reminding us of it, these two events of man's physical life stand before our soul, addressing the Christian heart.

As we contemplate these two great mysteries in their relation to Christmas and Easter, we find illuminating strength for our thinking, a powerful incentive for our willing, and an uplifting of our whole being. They stand there, these two pillars of the spirit, possessing an eternal value.

In the course of human evolution, however, men's capacities have changed for approaching the sublime conceptions of Christmas and Easter. During the early Christian centuries, when the Event of Golgotha had penetrated and shocked many hearts, men gradually found their way to the thought of a Savior dying on Golgotha. In the Crucified One hanging on the Cross they found the idea of redemption. And they gradually formed the powerful imagination of Christ dying on the Cross. But in later times, especially since our modern age began, Christian feeling has adjusted itself to the materialism rising in human evolution and has turned to the picture of the childlike element entering the world as the newborn Jesus.

One may certainly say that a sensitive person will find European Christianity decidedly materialistic from the way it has concentrated in recent centuries upon the Christmas manger. The desire to fondle the infant Jesus—this is not meant in a bad sense—has become trivial in the course of centuries. And many songs about the Jesus Child that today are still considered beautiful, or—as some people would say—charming, seem to us not serious enough for these grave times.

But the conception of Christmas and the conception of Easter are eternal pillars, eternal monuments of the human heart. One can truly say that this age of new spiritual revelations will cast new light upon Christmas, so that gradually it will be experienced in a glorious, new form. It will be our task to hear the call in present world events for a rejuvenation of many old conceptions, the call for a new revelation of the spirit. It will be our task to understand that a new meaning for Christmas is working its way out of world events for the strengthening and uplifting of the human soul.

The birth and death of a human being, however intently we may observe and analyze them, manifest themselves as events happening on the physical plane but in which a spiritual element prevails. No one who reflects earnestly can possibly deny that they give evidence in the way they occur that man is the citizen of a spiritual world. No physical observation of birth and death will ever find anything in what the senses can perceive and the intellect grasp, other than events in which the spirit is directly manifested in the physical. Only these two earthly events appear in this way to the human heart.

For the event of birth, the Christmas event, the human and Christian heart must develop an ever deeper sense of mystery. One may say that men have seldom looked from a high enough level upon the mysterious nature of birth. Seldom, indeed; but then at such moments its tidings speak to the depths of the human soul.

So it is, for instance, with the images associated with that spiritual genius of fifteenth-century Switzerland, Nikolaus von der Flüe.¹ It is related of him—and he himself told it—that before his birth, before he breathed the outer air, he beheld the physical form that he would have after birth and during the course of his life. Also, he beheld before birth the ceremony of his own christening, with the persons who were present and who were then around him in his early childhood. With the exception of one elderly person whom he did not recognize, he knew all these people because he had seen them before he saw the light of the physical world.

However one may view this story, one cannot but see that it points impressively to the mystery of human birth, which is so magnificently symbolized for world history by the Christmas imagery. The story of von der Flue suggests that there is something connected with our entrance into physical life that only by a very, very thin wall is hidden from our everyday view, a wall so thin that it can be broken through when a karmic situation exists as in the case of Nikolaus von der Flüe. Such moving allusions to the mystery of birth and Christmas still meet us here and there. But one must say that as yet mankind is hardly aware of the fact that birth and death, the two boundary pillars standing there in the physical world, reveal themselves even in their physical appearance as spiritual events that could never occur in the ordinary course of nature, as events in which, on the contrary, divine spiritual Powers actually intervene. This is evident from the fact that both these boundary experiences still remain mysteries, even in their physical manifestation.

The new revelation of the Christ now moves us to contemplate the course of human life—allow me to express it in the following way—as Christ wishes us to contemplate it in the twentieth century. As we try today to grasp the meaning of Christmas, let us recall a saying attributed to Christ Jesus that points truly to the Christmas event: “Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” “Except ye become as little children”: this is certainly not encouraging us to strip away all the mystery of the Christmas conception, and to drag it down to the banality of “dear little Jesus,” as many folk songs and other songs have done—the folk songs less than the art songs—during the materialistic development of Christianity. This very saying—“Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven”—impels us to look up to mighty impulses flowing through human evolution. And in our own time, all that is happening in the world can surely be no reason for lapsing into trivial ideas of Christmas, when the human heart is filled with pain, when it must look back upon millions of human beings who have met their death in these last years, must think of countless human beings hungering for food. At this time surely nothing is fitting but to contemplate the mighty thoughts in world history that have impelled and inspired humanity. One can be brought to such thoughts by the saying, “Except ye become as little children.” And one can supplement it by these words: “Unless you live your life in the light of this thought, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

When a human being enters this world as a child, he has come directly from the spiritual world. What happens in physical life, the procreation and growth of his physical body, is only a covering for the event that cannot be described otherwise than by saying: man's central being leaves the spiritual world. He is born out of the spirit into the body. When the Rosicrucian says “Ex Deo Nascimur,” he is speaking of the human being entering the physical world. What first en-sheathes him, what makes him a complete physical being here on earth: this is what is referred to by the words “Ex Deo Nascimur.” If one would speak of the kernel of the human being, his innermost core of being, one must say: he comes down from the spirit into this physical world. Through what takes place in the physical world—which he is able to observe from spiritual regions before his conception and birth—he is clothed with a physical body, in order that he may have experiences that are only possible in such a body. But he has come, in his central core of being, out of the spiritual world. And he reveals—to one who wants to see things as they really are in this world, who is not blinded by materialistic illusions—he reveals in his very first years by his very nature that he has come out of the spirit. One's experiences with a child, if one has insight, are of such a character that one feels in him the after-effects of his recent life in the spiritual world.

This is the mystery that is indicated by such stories as the one associated with Nikolaus von der Flüe. A trivial view and one strongly influenced by materialistic thinking asserts in its simplicity that a human being develops his ego gradually in the course of his life from birth to death, that his ego becomes more and more clearly manifest and more and more powerful. This is a naive way of thinking! If one observes the true human ego that comes from the spiritual world into its physical sheath through birth, one speaks quite differently about the entire physical development of the human being. For one knows that as the human being grows physically in his physical body, actually his true ego slowly vanishes into the body, becoming continually less and less manifest. One knows that what develops here in the physical world between birth and death is only a mirrored reflection of spiritual happenings, a dead reflection of a higher life. One is expressing it properly if one says, the entire fullness of a man's being gradually disappears into the body; it becomes more and more invisible. He lives his life here on earth by gradually losing himself in his body. At death he finds himself again in the spirit. That is what one says who knows the facts. Someone ignorant of the facts will declare that a child is incomplete, that his ego gradually develops to greater and greater perfection, growing out of vague subconscious levels of human existence. A knowledge of what the spiritual investigator sees, causes one to speak differently about these things than is done from today's sense-consciousness, enmeshed as it is in external illusions and materialistic feelings.

Thus the human being enters the world as a spiritual being. His bodily nature while he is a child is still undefined; it has as yet laid small claim to his spiritual nature, which is entering into physical existence as if it were falling asleep. This spiritual nature only seems so empty of content to us because we cannot perceive it in ordinary life, just as we cannot perceive the sleeping ego and astral body when they are separated from the physical and etheric bodies. But the fact that we do not perceive a being does not make it less perfect. This is what the human being has to accomplish in regard to his physical body: that he shall bury himself in it more and more deeply, in order to acquire faculties that can only be acquired in this way. His soul and spirit being must lose themselves for a while in physical existence. In order that we may always remember our spiritual origin, in order that we may grow strong in the thought that we have journeyed out of the spirit into the physical world: it is for this reason that the Christmas festival stands there like a mighty pillar of light within the Christian world.

The Christmas imagination must grow ever stronger in the future spiritual evolution of humanity. It will then become powerful again for humanity. Human beings will once more be able to draw strength from it for their physical life; it will remind them in the right way of their spiritual origin. Seldom in our present time does it have so powerful an effect upon human hearts as it will have in the future. For it is a strange fact, but rooted in the very laws of spiritual existence, that what appears in the world to help mankind forward does not appear at once in its ultimate form. It appears first, as it were, tumultuously, as if it were launched prematurely by unlawful spirits of world evolution. We only understand the historical evolution of humanity properly when we realize that truths are not always to be taken up as they first appear. The right moment must also be considered for their entrance into evolution in their true light.

Among various thoughts that have entered into the evolution of modern humanity—inspired, certainly, by the Christ Impulse but appearing at first in premature form—is that of human equality before God and the world, the equality of all men. This is a profoundly Christian conception capable of ever increasing in depth. But it should not have been presented to human hearts in such vague form as it was given by the French Revolution when it first appeared among mankind so tumultuously. We must realize that human life is involved in a process of evolution from birth to death, and that the chief impulses working upon it are distributed in time. Think how it is with the human being as he enters sense-existence: he is filled with the idea of the equality of human nature in all men. We experience the child nature most intensely when we regard the child as permeated through his whole being by this idea. Nothing that creates inequality among men, nothing that organizes men so that they feel different from other men: nothing of all this enters at first into the child's nature. It is all imparted to him in the course of his physical life. Inequality is created by men's physical existence. They come from the spirit equal before God and the world and their fellowmen. This is proclaimed by the mystery of the child.

This mystery is closely related to our understanding of Christmas, which will be made more profound by new Christian revelations. For these will have to do with the new Trinity: the human being, representing all humanity; the forces of Ahriman; and the forces of Lucifer. As one learns how man is placed in world existence in a situation of balance between Ahriman and Lucifer, one comes to understand the real significance of the human being in external physical life.

Most of all, understanding must come about, Christian understanding, for a certain aspect of human life. Someday Christian thought will announce a fact that has already been put forward by some minds since the middle of the nineteenth century—may I say, in stammering accents, but quite distinctly. When one has first grasped the fact that a child enters his earth life with a consciousness of human equality, then one must go on to the fact that as the child becomes a man, unequal powers develop in him—as if from just the fact of being born—powers that are obviously not of this earth. One is then confronting another great mystery of human existence, one that is in direct contrast to the idea of equality. To see into this mystery will help one to form a true picture of mankind—something that already at this present moment in time has become earnestly necessary for the future evolution of the human soul. One faces the startling fact that human beings begin to differ from one another while they are growing out of childhood, by reason of something that obviously is born in them, something in their blood: that is, their various gifts and capacities.

One meets the question of gifts and capacities that create such inequality among men in connection with the thought of Christmas. Future Christmas festivals will point to the origin of this vast difference throughout the world in human capacities, talents, even genius. A person will only attain balance in his life when he has learnt to know the origin of certain capacities that are distinguishing him from other men. The light of Christmas, of the Christmas candles, must provide an explanation for evolving humanity. It must answer the question: Do individuals suffer injustice between birth and death from the way the universe is ordered? What is the truth about capacities and talents?

Dear friends, many things will be seen in a different light when mankind has become permeated by the new Christian feeling. Particularly, it will be understood why an esoteric knowledge of the Old Testament included special insight into the nature of prophecy. Who were those prophets who appear in the Old Testament? They were individuals who had been sanctified by Jahve and authorized by Him to use special spiritual gifts that reached far beyond those of ordinary men. Jahve had first to sanctify those capacities that are born to men through the blood. We know that Jahve influences human beings in the time between their falling asleep and waking; He does not work in their conscious life. Every true believer of the Old Testament said in his heart: The capacities and talents that differentiate men, rising to the level of genius in the case of a prophet, are indeed born with the individual. But they are not used by him beneficently unless he sinks in sleep into the realm where Jahve guides his soul impulses. Jahve, active from the spiritual world, transforms his talents; otherwise they would only be physical, only part of his bodily organism.

We point here to the deep mystery of an Old Testament conception. But this must die away, including the belief in the nature of a prophet. New conceptions must enter the evolution of world history for the salvation of mankind. The talent that the ancient Hebrew believed was sanctified by Jahve during unconscious sleep must now in this modern age be sanctified by the human being himself when he is awake and in a state of clear consciousness. But he can only do this if he knows that all natural gifts, capacities, talents, even genius, are luciferic endowments, that they work luciferically in the world unless they are permeated and sanctified by all that enters the world as the Christ Impulse. One touches upon a tremendously important mystery in the evolution of modern humanity if one grasps this central fact of the new Christmas thoughts. The Christ must be so felt, so understood that a human being can now stand before Him as a New Testament believer and say: In spite of my childhood sense of equality, I have been endowed with various capacities and gifts. But they can only contribute to the salvation of mankind if I dedicate them to the service of Christ Jesus, if I permeate my whole nature with the Christ, so that they may be freed from the grasp of Lucifer.

A heart permeated by the Christ tears away from Lucifer what otherwise works luciferically in human physical existence. This must be the powerful thought that will pervade the future evolution of the human soul. It is the new Christmas thought, the new annunciation of Christ's activity in our souls, transforming the luciferic influence. Lucifer's power in us is not due to our having come out of the spiritual world, but to the fact that we are clothed by a physical body permeated by blood. We have our talents through heredity. Our individual capacities come to us through the luciferic stream of heredity. They must be mastered and put to use during physical life not through inspirations we receive from Jahve during sleep, but through the Christ Impulse that we can feel working within us in our fully conscious life.

“Oh, Christian,” says the new Christianity, “turn your thoughts to Christmas! lay upon the Christmas altar all the differentiation you have received through your blood! sanctify your capacities, gifts, genius as you behold them illuminated by the light coming from the Christmas tree!”

The new revelation of the spirit must speak a new language, and we must not be dull and unheeding as it addresses us in this extremely serious time. If we remain receptive, then we will find the power that mankind must find for the great tasks that will confront us in this very age. We must experience the meaning of Christmas in all its gravity. Today we must realize in clear waking consciousness what the Christ was really saying when He spoke those words, “Except ye become as little children, ye cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” The sense of equality that is natural to a child is not—if we regard him properly—proved false by these words. For the Child Whose birth we commemorate on Christmas Eve reveals ever new thoughts to mankind in the course of our evolution. He now proclaims that we must place all the distinguishing capacities we possess within the light of the Christ who ensouled this Child. All that our different talents achieve must be brought to the altar of this Child.

Perhaps, stirred by the earnestness of this Christmas thought, you will now ask, “How am I to experience the Christ Impulse in my own soul?” This question is often a burden in men's hearts.

Dear friends, what we may call the Christ Impulse does not become rooted in our souls in a moment, suddenly and tempestuously. It has taken root differently at different periods of evolution. In our present time a human being must take up in full, clear waking consciousness the cosmic truths that have been imparted stammeringly by our anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. As these truths are made known and as he comes to understand them, they will awaken in him the assurance that a new revelation, the new Christ Impulse for this age, has been brought to him. He will perceive the new Impulse if only he is attentive.

Try—in a truly lively way such as is appropriate for this age—to take into yourselves the spiritual thoughts of the cosmic Powers; try to take them up not merely as a teaching, or a theory, but so that they move your souls to their very depths and warm them, illuminate them, permeate them, so that you carry the thoughts living within you! Try to feel them so intensely that they seem to enter your soul by way of your body and change the body itself. Try to strip away from them all abstractions, all theory. Try to realize that they are true nourishment for the soul; they are not just thoughts, they are spiritual life coming from the spiritual world.

Enter into the most intimate inner union with these truths and you will observe three things. First you will observe that gradually—however they may be expressed—they eradicate from your soul something that usually appears so obviously in human beings in this age of the consciousness soul: self-seeking. When you begin to notice that they kill egotism and disarm self-seeking, then you will have perceived the Christ-permeated character of the thoughts of our anthroposophical spiritual science.

Secondly, observe the moment that untruthfulness approaches you, untruthfulness in any form, either when you yourself are tempted to be careless about the truth or when the falseness approaches you from the outside. If at such a moment you can also observe that immediately there is an impulse moving within you, warning you, pointing to the truth, admonishing you and impelling you to hold fast to the truth, wanting to prevent falsehood from entering your life—in contrast to ordinary present-day life, so much inclined to sham—then you are again experiencing the living Christ Impulse. No one will find it easy to lie, or to be casual about sham and pretence, in the presence of the spiritual thoughts of anthroposophy. A sign pointing the way to a sense for truth—apart from all other aspects of understanding: this you will find in the thoughts of the new revelation of the Christ. When you have reached the point where you do not seek a merely theoretical understanding of spiritual science, as is sought for any other science, but where the thoughts so penetrate you that you say to yourself, “Now that these thoughts are united with my soul, it is as if a Power of conscience stood beside me admonishing me, directing me toward the truth”: then you will have found the second aspect of the Christ Impulse.

In the third place, when you feel that something streams from these thoughts even down into your body, but especially into your soul, working to overcome illness, making you healthy and strong, when you sense the rejuvenating, invigorating power of these thoughts, the adversaries of illness: then you will have experienced the third aspect of the Christ Impulse. This is the goal toward which mankind strives through the new wisdom, in the new spirit: to find in the spirit itself the power to overcome egotism and the falseness of life, to overcome self-seeking through love, the sham of life through truth, illness through health-giving thoughts that put us into immediate accord with the harmonies of the universe, because they flow from the harmonies of the universe.

Not all these things can be attained at the present time, for man carries an ancient heritage around with him! There is a foolish lack of understanding, for instance, when such a backstairs politician as Christian Science twists into a caricature the thought of the healing power of the spirit. Even though, due to our ancient heritage, our thinking is not yet sufficiently powerful to accomplish what we long to accomplish—perhaps from a selfish motive—nevertheless thought does possess healing power. But in regard to such things people's ideas are always distorted. Someone who understands may tell you that certain thoughts give you health, and then he is suddenly stricken with this or that illness. It is indeed due to that ancient heritage that we cannot today be relieved of all illness merely by the power of our thought. But are you able to say what illness you would have had if you had not possessed these thoughts? Can you say that you could have passed your life in your present state of health if you had not had these thoughts? Can you prove that a person who has interested himself in our spiritual science and then has died at forty-five years of age, would without these thoughts not have died at age forty-two or age forty? People think the wrong way around! They concern themselves with what their karma cannot bestow upon them and pay no attention to what their karma does bestow upon them. If—in spite of every contradiction in the external world—you will watch and observe through the power of inner trust that you have gained from an intimate acquaintance with the thoughts of spiritual science, you will perceive the healing power that is penetrating even your physical body, the health-giving, freshening, rejuvenating force that is the third element which Christ the Healer brings with His continuous revelations to the human soul.

We wanted to enter more deeply into the thought of Christmas which is so closely related to the mystery of human birth. We wanted to bring in brief outline what is revealed to us today from the spirit as a continuation of the thought of Christmas. We can feel that it gives strength and support to our lives. We can feel that it places us, no matter what happens, in the midst of the impulses of cosmic evolution. We can feel ourselves united with those divine impulses; we can understand them and draw power for our will from this understanding, and light for our life of thought. Humanity is evolving—it would be wrong to deny it. Our only right course is to go forward with this evolution.

And Christ has declared: “I am with you always, even to the end of the world.” This is not just a phrase, it is truth. Christ has not only revealed Himself in the Gospels; Christ is with us; He reveals Himself continually. We must have ears to hear what He is ever newly revealing in this modern age. Weakness will overcome us if we have no faith in these new revelations; but strength will be ours if we have such faith.

Strength will indeed come to us if we accept the new revelations, even if they speak to us from life's seemingly contradictory suffering and misfortune. We journey as individual souls through repeated earth-lives during which our destiny comes to fulfillment. Even this thought, which enables us to sense the spiritual working behind external physical life, even this we can only accept if we take into ourselves in a truly Christian sense the revelations that follow one another. The Christian in this age, the true Christian, when he stands before the candles on the Christmas tree, should begin to work with the strengthening thoughts that can now come to him from the new cosmic revelations, bringing power to his will and illumination to his thinking. And his feeling should support the power and light of his thought in the course of the Christian year, to help him approach that other thought that points to the mystery of death: the Easter thought, which brings the final experience of human earthly existence before our souls as a spiritual experience. We will feel the Christ more and more livingly as we are able to place our own existence in the right relation to His life. The Rosicrucian of the Middle Ages, uniting his thought with Christianity, declared: Ex Deo Nascimur; in Christo Morimur; Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus. Out of the Divine we have been born, if we think of ourselves as human beings here on earth. In Christ we die. In the Holy Spirit we shall be awakened again. This all pertains to our life, our individual human life. If we look away from our own life to the life of Christ, then we see our life as mirrored reflection. Out of the Divine we are born; in Christ we die; in the Holy Spirit we shall be awakened again. This saying is true of the Christ living in our midst as our first-born Brother. We can so affirm it that we feel it to be the Christ-truth raying forth from Him and reflected in our human nature. Out of the Spirit was He begotten—as it stands in the Gospel of Luke, represented by the symbol of the descending dove—out of the Spirit was He begotten; in the human body He died; in the Divine will He rise again.

We can only perceive eternal truths in the right way if we see them in their contemporary reflection—not in a single, absolute, abstract form—and if we feel ourselves not as abstract humanity but as live, individual human beings whose duty is to think and act in harmony with the time in which we live. Then we will try to understand the Christ, who is with us “always, even to the end of the world,” to understand Him in His contemporary language as He teaches and enlightens and empowers us through the thought of Christmas. We will want to take the Christ into ourselves in His new language. We must become intimately related to Him. Then we will be able to fulfill in ourselves His true mission on this earth and beyond death. In each epoch human beings must take the Christ into themselves in their own way. This has been people's feeling when they have beheld in the right way the two great pillars of the spirit, Christmas and Easter.
That profound German mystic, Angelus Silesius,² expressed it in this way:

“Should Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born
And not in thee, then wert thou still forlorn.”

And, contemplating Easter, he wrote:

“The cross of Golgotha must be upraised in thee
Ere from thy sin its power shall make thee free.”

Truly, the Christ must live within us. We are not human beings in some abstract sense, we are human beings of a definite epoch, and the Christ must be born within us in our epoch in accordance with His words. We must endeavor to bring the Christ to birth within us, for our strengthening, for our illumination. As He has remained with us until now, as He will remain with mankind throughout all ages, even to the end of earthly time, so He wills now to be born in our souls. If we try to experience the birth of Christ within us in this epoch, as it becomes a light and a power in our soul—the eternal Light and eternal Power entering into time—then we perceive in the right way the historical birth of Christ in Bethlehem and its image in our own souls.

“Should Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born And not in thee, then wert thou still forlorn.”

As He creates the impulse in our hearts today to contemplate His birth—His birth in the course of human events, His birth in our individual souls—so we deepen the thought of Christmas within us. And so let us look toward that “night of consecration” (Weihenacht), which we should feel is bringing a new strength and a new illumination to mankind, to help them to endure the many evils and sorrows they have had to suffer and will still have to suffer.

“My Kingdom,” Christ said, “is not of this world.” It is a saying that challenges us, if we regard His birth in the right way, to find in our own souls the path to His Kingdom where He will give us strength and light for our darkness and helplessness, through the impulses coming from the world of which He Himself spoke, which His appearance at Christmas will always proclaim. “My Kingdom is not of this world.” But He has brought His Kingdom into this world, so that we may always find strength, comfort, confidence, and hope bestowed upon us in all the circumstances of life, if only we will come to Him, taking His words to heart, words such as these:

“Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

• 1. Nikolaus von der Flüe: 1417–1487. Urged arbitration as a method for resolving disputes.
• 2. Angelus Silesius: 1624–1677. See Rudolf Steiner, Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age, GA 7 (Blauvelt, New York, Steinerbooks, 1980).

We have let two Christmas plays pass before our soul. We may perhaps raise the thought: Are the first and second Christmas plays dedicated in the same sense to the great human cause that is so vividly before our soul these days? The two plays are fundamentally different, quite different from each other. One can hardly imagine two plays that are more different and yet are dedicated to the same subject. When we consider the first play, we see in all its parts the most wonderful simplicity, childlike simplicity. There is depth of soul, but it is breathed through and lived through everywhere with the most childlike simplicity. The second play moves on the heights of outer physical existence. It is immediately associated with the thought that the Christ Jesus enters the world as a king. He is confronted with the other king, Herod. Then it is shown that two worlds open up before us: the one that, in the good sense, develops humanity further, the world that Jesus Christ serves, and the other world that Ahriman and Lucifer serve, and which is represented by the devilish element. A cosmic, a cosmic-spiritual picture in the highest sense of the word! The connection between the development of humanity and the writing on the stars is immediately apparent. Not the simple, primitive clairvoyance of shepherds, which finds a “shine in the sky” that can be found in the simplest of circumstances, but the deciphering of the writing on the stars, for which all the wisdom of past centuries is necessary and from which one unravels what is to come. That which comes from other worlds shines into our world. In the states of dreaming and sleeping, that which is to happen is guided and directed; in short, occultism and magic permeate the entire play.

The two plays are fundamentally different. The first one comes to us, one may truly say, in childlike simplicity and innocence. Yet how infinitely admonishing it is, how infinitely sensitive. But let us first consider only the main idea. The human being who is to prepare the vessel for the Christ enters the world. Its entrance into the world is to be presented, to be demonstrated, that which Jesus is for the people into whose circle of existence he enters. Yes, my dear friends, this idea, this notion, has by no means conquered those circles so readily, within which such plays have been listened to with such fervor and devotion as this one. Karl Julius Schröer, of whom I have often spoken to you, was one of the first collectors of Christmas plays in the 19th century. He collected the Christmas plays in western Hungary, the Oberufer plays, from Bratislava eastwards, and he was able to study the way in which these plays lived and breathed among the people there. And it is very, very significant when you see how these plays were handed down from generation to generation in handwritten form, and how, not when Christmas was approaching, but when Christmas was approaching in the distant past, those who were found suitable for this in the village prepared to perform these plays. Then one sees how closely connected with the content of these plays was the whole annual cycle of life of the people in whose village circles such plays were performed. The time in the mid-19th century, for example, when Schröer collected these plays there, was already the time when they began to die out in the way they had been played until then. Many weeks before Christmas, the boys and girls in the village who were suitable to represent such games had to be found. And they had to prepare themselves. But the preparation did not consist merely of learning by heart and practicing what the play contained in order to represent it; rather, the preparation consisted in the fact that these boys and girls changed their whole way of life, their external way of life. From the time they began their preparations, they were no longer allowed to drink wine or consume alcohol. They were no longer allowed to fight on Sundays, as is usually the case in the village. They had to behave very modestly, they had to become gentle and mild, they were no longer allowed to beat each other up, and they were not allowed to do many other things that were otherwise quite common in villages, especially in those times. In this way, they also prepared themselves morally through the inner mood of their souls. And then it was really as if they were carrying something sacred around in the village when they performed their plays.

But this only came about slowly and gradually. Certainly, in many villages in Central Europe in the 19th century there was such a mood, the mood that at Christmas these plays were something sacred. But one can only go back to the 18th century and a little further, and this mood becomes more and more unholy. This mood was not there from the beginning, when these games came to the village, not at all from the beginning, but it only emerged and established itself over time. There were times, one does not even have to go back that far, when one could still find something different. There you could find the village gathering here or there in Central Europe, and a cradle in which the child lay, in which a child lay, not a manger, a cradle in which the child lay, and with it, indeed, the most beautiful girl in the village – Mary must have been beautiful! – but an ugly Joseph, an ugly-looking Joseph! Then a scene similar to the one you saw today was performed. But above all: when it was announced that the Christ was coming, the whole community appeared, and each person stepped on the cradle. Above all, everyone wanted to have stepped on the cradle and rocked the Christ Child, that was what it was all about, and they made a tremendous racket, which was supposed to express that the Christ had come into the world. And in many such older plays, there is a terrible mockery of Joseph, who has always been depicted as an old man in these times, who was laughed at.

How did these plays, which were of this nature, actually come into the people? Well, we must of course remember that the first form of the greatest, most powerful earthly idea, the appearance of Christ Jesus on earth, was the idea of the savior who had passed through death, of the one who, through death, won for the earth what we call the meaning of the earth. It was the suffering of Christ that first came into the world in early Christianity. And to the suffering Christ, after all, sacrifices were offered in the various acts that took place in the cycle of the year. But only very slowly and gradually did the child conquer the world. The dying savior first conquered the world, only slowly and gradually did the child conquer it. We must not forget that the liturgy was in Latin and that the people understood nothing. Only gradually did people begin to see something more in the sacrifice of the Mass, which was fixed for Christmas, besides the sacrifice of the Mass that was celebrated three times at Christmas. Perhaps not without good reason – if not for him personally, then for his followers – the idea of showing the mystery of Jesus to the faithful on Christmas night is attributed to Francis of Assisi, who, out of a certain opposition to the old forms and spirit of the church, held his entire doctrine and his entire being. And so we gradually, slowly see how the believing community at Christmas should be offered something that was connected with the great mystery of humanity, with the coming down of Christ Jesus to earth. At first, a manger was set up and figures were merely made. It was not acted out by people, but figures were made: the infant Jesus and Joseph and Mary – but in three dimensions. Gradually, this was replaced by priests dressing up and acting it out in the simplest way. And it was only in the 13th or 14th century that the mood began to develop within the communities that could be described as people saying to themselves: We also want to understand something of what we see, we want to penetrate into the matter. And so people began to be allowed to play individual parts in what was initially only played by the clergy. Now, of course, one must know life in the middle of the Middle Ages to understand how that which was connected with the most sacred was at the same time taken in such a way as I have indicated. At that time it was entirely possible out of a sense of accommodation, so that the village community, the whole community, could say: I too rocked a little with my foot at the cradle where Christ was born! — out of the accommodation of this mood. It could be expressed in this and in many other ways, in the singing that accompanied it, which at times intensified to the point of yodeling, in all that had taken place. But that which was alive in the matter had in itself the strength, one might almost say, to transform itself out of a profane, out of a profanation of the Christmas idea, into the most sacred itself. And the idea of the child appearing in the world conquered the holy of holies in the hearts of the simplest people.

That is the wonderful thing about these plays, of which the first was one that was not simply there as it now appears to us, but became so: piety first unfolding in the mood out of impiety, through the power of that which they represent! The Child had first to conquer hearts, had first to find entrance into hearts. Through that which was holy in Itself, It sanctified hearts that at first encountered It with rudeness and untamedness. That is the wonderful thing about the developmental history of these plays, how the mystery of Christ still has to conquer hearts and souls piece by piece. And tomorrow we will take a closer look at some of what has been conquered step by step. Today I would just like to say: it is not without reason that I noticed how admonishingly even the simplest thing is presented in the first game.

As I said, slowly and gradually that which came into the world with the mystery of Christ entered into the hearts and souls of human beings. And it is actually the case that the further one goes back in the tradition of the various mysteries of Christ, the more one sees that the form of expression is an elevated one, a spiritually elevated one. I would like to say that the further back one goes, the more one enters into a “cosmic utterance”. We have already incorporated some of this into our reflections, and in the previous Christmas lecture I showed how Gnostic ideas were used to understand the deep mystery of Christ. But even if we follow this or that even in the later periods of the Middle Ages, we find that, as late as the Middle Ages, something is present in the Christmas poems of that time that was later absent: an emphasis on the early Christian idea that Christ descends from the heights of the spirit. We find it in the 11th and 12th centuries when we bring such a Christmas carol before our soul:

The honor of the incarnate Son of God
Is proclaimed by the heavenly hosts, rejoicing and exulting;
And loudly resounds from the shepherd's mouth
The joyful tidings.

“Glory in the highest! And peace on earth!”
So it resounds in solemn song;
With wonder it is seen by men today,
What never happened before.

The heavens shine brightly with a new star;
Guided by it, from afar come
the wise men, and greet with delight
the sight of them.

With him, truth has now been born anew.
What was lost through sin has been replaced;
In the light of grace, the fruits of blessing
Bloom more gloriously.

The punishment of the past has now been revealed,
Since this fruit has sprung from the earth,
Which grants us life and refreshment,
And nourishes forever.

He has come, clothed in our flesh,
The good shepherd who tends all nations;
He has dwelt, like us, in pilgrim huts,
Suffered for us.

Hail then to the earth that saw his light!
Through him for time and eternity beglücker,
Consecrate everyone to him, the Savior, thanks and love
With pure impulses.

Help us, Christ, to fulfill Your law ourselves,
Through You, let us succeed in doing good deeds,
So that one day, the crown of eternal life
will also reward us!

Such was the tone that resonated from those who had still understood something of the cosmic significance of the mystery of Christ.

Or there was another Christmas poem from the middle of the Middle Ages, a little later than the Carolingian period:

The Son of God, begotten from eternity, the invisible and without end,

Through whom heaven and earth were built, and all that dwells there was created,

Through whom the days and hours of the course pass by and return;

Whom the angels in the heavenly castle always praise in fully harmonious singing,

Has, free from all original sin, clothed himself with a weak body,

Which he took from Mary, the Virgin, to destroy the guilt of the first father Adam,

As well as the lust of the mother Eve.

Today's glorious day of lofty splendor testifies that now the son,

The true sun, dispelled the old darkness of the world with the beam of light.

Now the night is illuminated by the light of that new star,

Which once amazed the sky-wise gaze of the magicians,

And see, that glow shines for the shepherds, who were dazzled

By the lofty radiance of the heavenly inhabitants. O Mother of God, rejoice, for at your birth you are attended by a host of angels,

Singing God's praises. O Christ, you are the only Son of the Father, who for our sake took on the nature of

man. Please revive your own, who are imploring you here.

O Jesus, hear the pleas of those whom you have deigned to take care of, so that you, O Son of God, may share your divinity with them.

This is the tone that, I would say, sounds from the heights of more theologically colored scholarship down to the people.

Now we also hear a little of the sound that rang out at Christmas from the people themselves, when a soul was found that expressed the people's feelings:

He is powerful and strong,
who was born to win,
That is Saint Knist.
yes, praise be to thee in all that is, Niewan the deep
because of his great arrogance
so hell became his portion.

In hell is Michael out of place
who has his home there,
Your sun never shines so brightly,
the moon does not help him,
Only the bright stars,
yes, he has to see everything,
yes, he would love to be in heaven so much.

In heaven there is a house,
a golden gate opens therein,
the windows are the pearls of pity,
which adorn our little house
with precious stones:
no one enters there,
he is cleansed of all sins so pure.

He who gladly goes to church
and stands there without sinning,
may well live joyfully,
he will be given
the angels' common lot,
if he so desires:
in heaven, life is so pure.

I have long served
alas a man
Who walks around in the darkness
and has sworn an oath at my wrongdoing,
His reward is evil.
Help me, Holy Spirit,
to free myself from his delusion.

That is the prayer that the simple man said and understood. We have read the descent, now we have the ascent.

I will try to reproduce this 12th-century Christmas carol so that we can see how the simple man also grasped the full greatness of Christ and related it to the whole of cosmic life:

He is mighty and strong, who was born at Christmas. This is the Holy Christ. Everything that is there praises him, except for the devil, who, through his great arrogance, was sent to hell. There is much filth in hell – “much” is the old word for great, mighty – there is much filth in hell. He who has his home there, who is at home in hell, must realize: the sun never shines there, the moon does not help, nor do the bright stars. There everyone who sees something must say to himself how nice it would be if he could go to heaven. He would very much like to be in heaven. In the kingdom of heaven stands a house. A golden path leads to it. The columns are marble, that is, made of marble, adorned with precious stones. But no one enters there who is not completely pure from sin. Anyone who goes to church and stands there without envy may well have a higher life, for there are always young ones, that is, when he has finally ended his life. Remember, I once introduced the word “younger” from the ether body here. Here you have it in the vernacular! So when he is given “young” to the angelic community, he can certainly wait for it, because in heaven life is pure. — And now he who prays this Christmas carol says: I have unfortunately served a man who walks around in hell, who has developed my certain deed. Help me, holy Christ, to be released from his captivity, that is, to be released from the prison of the evil one. So that is in the language of the people:

He is mighty and strong
Who was born at Christmas...

The mood of the present time is not likely, perhaps, to create in many people that depth of inner feeling of which legends and sagas speak when they refer to the Christmas Holy Nights, when the soul that is prepared for it is able to have some experience of the spiritual world. You know one such impressive legend from the performances given here, that of Olaf &Åsteson. Many similar things point to Christmas time in the same way.

It is clear, not only to a more thoughtful student of the human heart, but to anyone who observes in the external world the general spirit of our time, that a Christmas mood, a Christmas impulse, must now be sought anew by mankind. What lives in the celebration of Christmas, in the thought of Christmas, must take hold of the human soul in a new way. Just think, dear friends—in order to realize the broader aspects of our contemporary religious and spiritual mood—how little inclination there is at this time to contemplate the Christ as such, to direct the eyes of the soul to Him.

People often believe they are speaking about the Christ, and yet you will find they have made hardly any distinction between Christ and God the Father except in name. While it is true that for many believers the Christ still stands at the center of their religious creed and that beside Him all else of a divine nature loses its luster, nevertheless we have seen for some time now the rise of a theology that has really lost the Christ, that speaks of a God in general even when Christ is meant. The specific quality that is essential when the human heart looks up to Christ needs to be found again. And perhaps the most worthy celebration of the Christmas Festival at this time is actually to inscribe in our souls how mankind can find the Christ again. Many historical facts of the evolution of mankind will first have to be considered—in the spiritual scientific sense—if a true impulse is to be reawakened that will lead human souls to Christ.

The Christmas Festival can not only remind us, as is intended, of the entrance of Jesus into earth life, but it can also point to the birth of Christianity itself, the entrance of Christianity into the course of earth evolution. And so let us today direct our spiritual vision primarily to what might be called the Christmas of Christianity itself, the entrance, the birth, of Christianity within the sphere of the earth. The external facts are known, of course, but our knowledge of them needs to be intensified.

Christianity came into the world in the person of Christ Jesus, into the midst of the adherents of the Old Testament. We can observe the phenomena that occurred among these people when Christianity was born. We see how they were externally divided into two separate currents, that of the Pharisees and that of the Sadducees. It is necessary to view all these things henceforth in a new light. When we consider the general course of development of an individual or of humanity itself—indeed, the course of the entire earth—this will become increasingly clear to us if we conceive it as a continual balancing between luciferic and ahrimanic forces. But that is merely the designation we use; there has always existed among the deeper natures of humanity a consciousness of the actual existence of Lucifer and Ahriman and of the condition of balance between them. Fundamentally, the contrast of the Pharisaic element and the Sadducean element in the ancient Hebrew evolution was nothing else than the contrast of ahrimanic and luciferic elements. Jesus, coming into external earth life, entered the balancing stream. He entered earthly existence at that place for which the most important designation up to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha was that Solomon's Temple had been built there. In a certain sense we can only understand the nature of Solomon's Temple if we are able to perceive it in contrast to the Christianity then being born. It is well-known how quickly after Christianity came into being Solomon's Temple was destroyed, so far as external existence is concerned. This memorial of the earlier evolution out of which the spirituality of Christianity arose was destined to exist no longer at the place from which that spirituality streamed forth. The nature of Solomon's Temple and the nature of Christianity present a strong contrast. Solomon's Temple embraced in marvelous, magnificent, sometimes gigantic symbols all that was contained in the world conception of the Old Testament. It was an image of the entire universe so far as this could be represented by the ancient world conception, in its conformity to law, in its inner structure, in its permeation by divine-spiritual beings. It was nonetheless an image of the universe that in a certain sense and in one direction was extraordinarily one-sided. That is to say, the Temple was a spatial image of the universe, an image that made use of spatial forms and spatial relations to express the mysteries of the universe. But for those who viewed it in the spirit of the Old Testament, its symbolism was endowed with life.

We see, on the one hand, in the Judaism of the Pharisees and Sadducees, the externalization of what had been given to humanity through the Old Testament; on the other hand, we see in the symbolism of Solomon's Temple the means of deepening the life of Old Testament humanity. It might be said that what has flowed into the entire Old Testament revelation came to expression in these two directions: one outward, exoteric, in the Judaism of the Pharisees and Sadducees; the other esoteric, through what was represented in the mysterious symbols of Solomon's Temple. And from this exotericism and esotericism sprang what became Christianity.

This Christianity was at first, at the time of its birth, unknown to the world at large, to that world in which lived the spirituality of the humanity of that time, namely, the Greek world. Within the expanding Roman empire in which the Mystery of Golgotha was being prepared through the birth of Jesus, it was not known what a momentous Event had taken place among the Jewish people. Nothing was known of the significant Event that constitutes the meaning of the earth. Nevertheless, although the humanity of that time allowed it to pass unnoticed outwardly, the most sublime Event of our earth evolution, inwardly the Christianity that was coming into being was connected with what was then considered the whole world.

In what ways, dear friends, was it connected? The meaning that Christmas conceals is revealed later in the Easter conception. What then is the important aspect of Easter that really intensifies the meaning of Christmas? It is the contemplation of the Savior of mankind Who died on the cross: the cross with the dead God. The intention and the deed originated in humanity: to put to death the God Who had appeared in their midst. The profound magnitude, the full power, of this thought should again enter into human souls. Contemplation of the deed by which the God Who appeared on earth was killed by men: this should be put into language by which it can be understood. Let us try to do this, at least from one point of view.

When we look upon the Mystery of Golgotha, we find it to be a great world-historical confluence of spiritual streams that had been present in the ancient Mysteries. (You know this from my book, Christianity as Mystical Fact.) What had taken place in the ancient Mysteries as the sacrificial rite, the rite of initiation, what had taken place in the temple with, one might say, limited importance, was now set out on the great stage of world history; it now took place in the realm of our entire earth existence. In a certain sense, the initiation of humanity itself was brought out of the temples and presented as historical event before the whole world.

Now let us ask: what were the thoughts of someone permitted to take part in the initiation rites of the ancient Mysteries—when these still possessed their true significance? Through his preparatory instruction such a person knew with certainty that what is directly apparent in the external world of the senses, and what can be comprehended by the human intellect, is a world of mere phenomena, a world of appearance. He knew that what a human being experiences immediately in his environment during his waking hours between birth and death is only the outer view, the phenomenal display, of an inner reality, and that in ordinary life this inner reality is concealed. In the Mystery rite itself such a person sought true reality in what streamed to him, as it were, from the depths of existence, in what could be drawn out and separated from the merely phenomenal, illusory existence. Someone who took part in the ancient Mysteries could always say to himself: When I walk through the world and see external nature, it is illusion. When I experience this or that in the world, it is illusion. When I do any kind of work for the world, it is illusion. But when I am permitted to take part in the holy acts of the Mysteries in the Temple, then something happens that is truth, not illusion. Something is drawn forth, so to speak, out of the illusory existence of the world and transformed into a sacramental act; and this act contains exact truth in contrast to the illusion.

If we wish to be quite clear concerning this view of the Mysteries, we must compare it to the view prevailing today in our materialistic age. We must understand that all that is called reality today in this age of materialism was regarded as illusion in the conceptions belonging to the Mysteries; while, for example, the sacramental act performed as the initiation rite, which most people today consider “fantastic”, was esteemed by those acquainted with the Mysteries as the only reality in life. Such an act, therefore, was not performed at random, but at certain times when it was believed that something of the true nature of things might push through the phenomena of outer life and, as it were, be captured through the act. It has often been mentioned that one such important rite consisted in showing the sacrifice of the God, the death of the God, and His resurrection after three days. This pointed to the fact that to someone who penetrates more deeply into the external world, death can reveal the true nature of this world, that reality must be sought beyond death.

Think of all this entering human souls from the content of the Mysteries at the beginning of our Christian era, expressing the most important fact in world phenomena! Someone in that era pondering on the course of our earth evolution would have been able to say: “In ancient times it was possible for man to learn something about the divine-spiritual world through atavistic initiation science. It was formerly revealed to man out of earth evolution itself. That time is now past. The time has come when nothing more can be drawn from the content of this world to guide us to the divine-spiritual world. This world has lost its divine-spiritual life.” That is what such a soul would have said. Where must one look for the meaning of evolution for earth-humanity? Where was the real meaning of the earth at the time when Christianity came into being? Where was the expression of what was willed in man's innermost being at that time? At Golgotha on the cross. It was Death! What formerly had gushed forth from earth evolution for human salvation, was itself dead. To the soul that penetrated more deeply into cosmic reality, an earth impulse, the most profound of all earth impulses, was given at the time of the birth of Christianity, in the contemplation of the dead God.

Only when experienced in this way does the full magnitude appear of the matter with which we are here concerned. The ancient world conception, the ancient world-wisdom had flowed into Solomon's Temple; but it no longer held anything of what had made it great. Something new had to enter world evolution. And so in the course of time the destruction of Solomon's Temple and the rise, the birth, of Christianity exactly coincided. Solomon's Temple: a spatial symbolic image of the content of the cosmos; Christianity, comprehended as a time-phenomenon: a new image of the cosmos. Christianity is not something that appears as a spatial image, as in the case of Solomon's Temple; one only understands Christianity if one grasps it in images of time. One must see that earth evolution proceeded as far as the Mystery of Golgotha; then the Mystery of Golgotha intervened; then, through the Christ pouring Himself into humanity, evolution moves on in this way or that. Its deeper content is not to be equated in the remotest degree with anything appearing in spatial images, not even in the gigantic, magnificent spatial images of Solomon's Temple. Nevertheless, Solomon's Temple, as also the inner aspect of Pharisaic and Sadducean life, contained the soul of the world consciousness of that time. The soul of the world consciousness two thousands years ago was to be found in Old Testament Judaism. Into this soul was laid the seed of Christianity, a new seed that, while growing out of all that may be expressed in space, can only be expressed in time. The becoming following the existing: that is the inner relation of Christianity that was then being born to the soul element of the world of that time, to Judaism that was embodied in Solomon's Temple, which later collapsed. Christianity was born into the soul of ancient Judaism.

As Christianity sought the soul in Judaism, so it sought the spirit in Hellenism. The Gospels themselves, as transmitted to the world (I refer only to what has been handed down), have in the main passed through the Greek spirit. The thoughts through which the world could think Christianity are the spiritual wisdom of Greece. The first apologia of the Church Fathers appeared in the Greek tongue. Just as Christianity was born into the soul that for the humanity of that time lived in Judaism, so it was born into the spirit provided by Hellenism.

Romanism furnished the body. It was Romanism that at that time could provide an external organization for concepts of empire. Judaism soul, Hellenism spirit, Romanism body—body, of course, in the sense that the social structure of humanity is body. Romanism is in reality the forming of external inclinations and institutions; the thoughts concerning external institutions live within them. It is the corporeal element in historical existence, the corporeal element in historical development. Just as Christianity was born into the soul of Judaism and into the spirit of Hellenism, so it was born into the body of the Roman Empire. Superficial people even think that everything contained in Christianity can be explained out of Judaism, Hellenism and Romanism. In the same way, indeed, that materialistic natural scientists believe that everything in a human being is inherited from parents, grandparents, etc., ignoring the fact that the soul comes from spiritual regions and only puts on the body as a garment: so these superficial people like to say that Christianity consists of what in actual fact it has only put on as an outer garment. The essence of Christianity entered the world, of course, with Christ Jesus Himself; but this Christianity was born into the Jewish soul, into the Greek spirit, and into the body of the Roman Empire. That, in a sense, is the birth of Christianity itself, viewed in the light of Christmas thought.

It is important not to accept these facts as mere external theories, but to relate them deeply to our thought of Christmas, to learn what their significance really is in relation to the newborn Impulse that is now entering world evolution with the Spirits of Personality—as I explained here recently.³ Indeed, dear friends, anything new that purposes to enter into the course of world evolution must first struggle through what remains of the old. This is precisely the mystery of world-becoming, that on the one hand there is a normal, progressive evolution; on the other hand, retarded luciferic and ahrimanic forces interfere with it and modify it, but also in a certain sense support it as it advances. I have often called attention to the fact that we cannot escape this ahrimanic-luciferic force; we must look straight at it calmly, and face it consciously. On no account must we simply submit to these things unconsciously. From world impulses shadows remain behind that continue to have an effect even after something new has come into existence; but their luciferic and ahrimanic character must be recognized. This ahrimanic-luciferic element must accompany evolution, but it must not be accepted in an absolute sense; its luciferic- ahrimanic character must be perceived. Something shadowlike has remained behind from Solomon's Temple, something shadow-like also from Hellenism, and something shadow-like from the Roman Empire. Nearly two thousand years ago it was self-evident that from these three—soul, spirit, and body—Christianity was born. But soul, spirit, and body could not immediately disappear; they remained in a certain way as after-effects. Now is the time when this fact must be clearly understood and when the completely unique character of the Christ Impulse itself must be realized.

A shadow remains behind from the most important extract of the esoteric Old Testament, from the Mystery of Solomon's Temple; a shadow remains from Hellenism; also one from the Roman Empire. We must learn to distinguish the shadows from the light. It will be mankind's task from this present time into the immediate future to differentiate between the shadows and the light in the right way.

We see the shadow of the Roman Empire in Roman Catholicism. This is not Christianity; it is the shadow of the ancient Roman Empire into which Christianity had to be born. In its forms there continues to live what had to be built up at that time as a framework for Christianity. But we must learn—humanity must learn—to distinguish the shadow of the old Roman Empire from Christianity. The essence of Christianity is not to be found in the organization of the Catholic Church, or indeed of any of the Christian churches. One sees in their hierarchical aspect what existed and developed in the Roman Empire from Romulus to the Emperor Augustus. The illusion arises only because Christianity was born into this body.

In this sense Solomon's Temple has also remained as a shadow. The Mysteries of Solomon's Temple have—with a few exceptions—been completely absorbed into the Masonic and other secret societies of the present time. As the Roman Church is the shadow of the ancient Roman Empire, so what continues to exist in these societies—however strongly they assert to the contrary, even to the extent of excluding Jews—is the shadow of ancient Judaism, the shadow of the esoteric Jehovah-worship. Again the shadow must be distinguished from the light. Just as the shadow expressed in the perpetuation of the Roman Empire in the Catholic Church, in the churches generally, must be distinguished from the light shining in Christianity, so the element into which Christianity had to be born as soul must be distinguished from the shadow that continues to work in societies founded on symbolism that is reminiscent of Solomon's Temple.

These things must be recognized. They must be looked at in the right way. And they must be illuminated in our time by the new revelations of which we have been speaking during these days.

The Greek spirit into which Christianity had to be born—in spite of all the beauty of Hellenism, in spite of its esthetic and other important content, in spite of the influence it has upon us—has left its shadow as the modern world conception of the cultured humanity that has brought this fearful catastrophe⁴ upon mankind. When Hellenism existed with its world conception, it was something different. Everything, dear friends, is right in its own time. If something is taken in an absolute sense, and carried on after it has become antiquated, it then becomes the shadow of itself. And the shadow is not the light; it may change suddenly into the opposite of the real thing. Aristotelianism still shows something of the greatness of ancient Greece. Aristotle in modern raiment is materialism. Christianity was born into the Jewish soul, the Greek spirit, the Roman body; but the three have left their shadows behind. The challenge sounds through our time, like the call of an angel's trumpet, to perceive the true facts, to look through the shadows to the light.

Truly, anyone who ponders over this present moment in time, who considers impartially, without prejudice, what has brought about the fearful, distressing events of recent years, surely cannot help wondering whether some sort of light can be sought that would shine into the darknesses of earth in a different way from those lights which most people still wish to regard as the only ones. One should find the will to look for a way through the shadows to the light. For the shadows will assert themselves. They will become effective through people who perhaps have endured little themselves of the great suffering of humanity at the present time, who have no sympathy, or very little, for the terrible agony that has flashed through the world, agony that is itself proof that many of the thoughts which have appeared were destined to be shipwrecked. One who tries to examine with deeper understanding what is really not difficult to see today, one who has the resolute will to look without prejudice at what is happening today among men, will feel an impulse to seek the light. He should attach some importance to this impulse in his soul, not listen to those who—depending on the place they occupy—wish only to defend one of the ancient shadows, but listen to his own soul; it will speak clearly enough if only he does not let its voice drown under the external assertions of the shadows.

If today one looks compassionately at what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen, one will be able to see a strange figure standing before men: a distortion of the truly human form, in garments woven of shadows, a figure uniting in itself in its thoughts, sensations, feelings, and will-impulses what has put humanity on a wrong track and gives every promise of taking it farther on the wrong track. Deep within what is happening outwardly dwell those three shadow-thoughts that have been described.

Whoever learns to see that figure in garments woven of shadows, has prepared himself in the right way to look at something else: to look at the tree that can illuminate even today's darkness with its lights. Whoever is pure in heart and does not allow himself to be misled by the threefold shadow-existence—antiquated symbolism, antiquated ecclesiasticism, antiquated materialistic science—will see what wills to shine in the darkness as a real Christmas tree, and lying beneath it the Christ-Jesus Child, illuminated anew by the Christmas light. This is the real aim of our anthroposophically-oriented science of the spirit: to seek the Christmas light, so that the Jesus Child, Who entered the world first to work and then to be understood, may gradually be understood; to illuminate in a modest way the greatest of all events in earth existence. This is the goal of our anthroposophical spiritual science within the religious currents of humanity. People will not understand the light that this spiritual science wants to recognize as its Christmas light unless they have the will really to penetrate the threefold shadow-existence of our time. The times are serious. And whoever lacks the will to take them seriously will perhaps not be able in this incarnation to see what should truly be perceptible at this time to every human being of good will, there for the healing of the many wounds that otherwise mankind will still have to suffer. People of good will should take notice of what may be seen when the anthroposophical science of the spirit enkindles the Christmas light. The light is truly small, and he who professes it remains humble. He does not wish to extol it to the world as something special, for he knows that now it appears small and insignificant, and many men and many generations must still come, to help what now burns dimly to become brighter. But even though the light is weak, it shines on something whose effect within human earthly evolution is not weak, something that is working powerfully as the deepest meaning of human evolution. The light illumines what we may call the birth of Christianity, the Christmas of Christianity. Along with the Easter meaning of anthroposophical spiritual science may this its Christmas meaning be understood. May many, many souls look forward in this spirit to the profound experience of the Christmas Holy Nights. They will then be able to feel that already a call is sounding through the world to contemplate the appearance of Jesus, who awaited here on earth that moment when He was to meet death, in order in His spirit-life after death to give a new meaning to mankind and to earth evolution.

My dear friends, let us feel something of this Christmas mood that is to enter our souls from spiritual science! I would like at this moment to begin Christmas solemnly, by expressing the wish—as my soul's innermost holy Christmas greeting—that you may experience the mood of consecration that wills to receive the new Christ-revelation. I assume that you too are beginning Christmas with that earnestness of which I endeavored to speak today, an earnestness appropriate to the present condition of the world. In this spirit, my dear friends, I wish you with all my heart a holy, solemn Christmas!

• 3. Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, 20 Dec. 1918, Die Soziale Grundfordentng unserer Zeit/in Geanderter Zeitlage, GA 186 (Dornach, Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1979).
• 4. World War I.

If we would deepen our thoughts at this time in a manner suitable for the present age, this will best be done in the way indicated yesterday, namely, by looking back over the process of human evolution in order to recognize from the spiritual guidance vouchsafed to mankind hitherto, what tasks devolve upon men today. It must not, of course, be forgotten that the point of salient importance in the Christmas thought is that in the night just beginning the Light of Christ shone into the evolution of humanity at the point of time when through this Event, through this integration, as it were, of the Mystery of Golgotha into earthly life, meaning was given to man's life on Earth, and therewith to the Earth herself.

Yesterday I spoke to you of how in the times before the Mystery of Golgotha an important rôle was played by the festivals that were celebrated in the Mysteries at Midsummer, when man, together with the Earth, opens his being to the Cosmos and when his soul can enter into union with Powers belonging to realms beyond the Earth. We heard how among certain peoples the leaders of the Mysteries, following the path along which, at Midsummer, at our St. John's tide, the human soul can be led into the divine-spiritual worlds, offered up their thoughts and feelings to the divine-spiritual Powers. They did this because they realized that whatever revealed itself to them in the course of the year was exposed to the temptations of the Luciferic powers unless at Midsummer, when the Earth spreads wide her wings into the cosmic expanse, these thoughts were felt to be Grace bestowed by the divine-spiritual Beings.

I went on to show how the evolutionary process brought it about that for a certain section of mankind, the Midwinter festival quite naturally replaced the Midsummer festival. Even in our present vapid Christmas thoughts something is still left of this Midwinter festival. The birth of the Saviour in the Midwinter night is either celebrated in religious communities, or, because a man feels that he must again find the way to the light of the Spirit, he celebrates Christmas in the stillness of his own heart, conscious that at this time of the year he is closest to the Earth and her life when he is alone with himself. For the Earth too, at this time, is shut off from the Cosmos; enveloped in her raiment of snow she lives in cosmic space as a being indrawn and isolated.

Christmas thoughts played a part even in the times when among certain peoples the Midsummer festival was still of paramount importance, but in the pre-Christian era the meaning of the Christmas thought was not the same as it is today. At that time the sublime Sun Spirit still belonged to the Cosmos, had not yet come down to the Earth. The whole condition of the human soul at Midwinter, when together with the Earth man felt himself to be in a kind of cosmic isolation, was different from what it is today. And we learn to know what this condition was if we turn our attention to certain Mysteries that were celebrated mainly in the South in times long, long before the Mystery of Golgotha. Initiation in those Mysteries was conferred upon candidates in the old way, the Initiation-Science of that day was imparted to them. And among certain ancient peoples this Initiation-Science consisted in the candidate learning to read the Book of the World—I do not mean anything that is conveyed by dead letters written on paper, but what the Beings of the universe themselves communicate. Those who have insight into the secrets of the Cosmos know that everything growing and thriving on the Earth is an image of what shines down from the stars out of the cosmic expanse.

A man who learnt this cosmic reading as we today learn the far simpler kind of reading by means of dead letters, knew that he must see in every plant a sign revealing to him something of the secrets of the Universe, and that when he let his gaze survey the world of plants or animals, this survey was itself a form of reading. And it was in such a way that the Initiates of certain ancient Mysteries taught their pupils. They did not read to them out of a book but communicated to them what they experienced under the inspiration of the so-called Year-God concerning the secrets of the course of the year and their significance for human life.

It was in this way that an ancient wisdom related world-beings and world-happenings to what concerned the life of man. When the sages of old communicated such things to their pupils, they were inspired by divine-spiritual Beings such as the Year-God.

Who was this Year-God who belonged to the rank of the Primal Powers, or Archai, in the Hierarchies? Who was this Year-God? He was a Being to whom certain of those who were versed in Initiation-Science lifted their hearts and in so doing were endowed by him with the power and inner light enabling them to read one thing from the budding plants in Spring, another from the ripening of the early fruits in Summer, another when the leaves redden in Autumn and the fruits ripen, and yet another when the trees glitter under the snowflakes and the Earth with her rocks is covered with a veil of snow. This ‘reading’ lasted for a whole year—through Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter; and in this reading the secrets of Man himself were unveiled in the intercourse between teachers and pupils. And then the cycle of the year began anew.

Some idea of what these ancient Initiates taught to their pupils under the inspiration of the Year-God may be conveyed in the following way. The attention of the pupils was drawn, first of all, to what is revealed in Spring, when the snow is over and the Sun is gaining strength, when the first buds of the plants are appearing and the forces of the Earth are being renewed. The pupils were made aware of how a plant growing in the meadows and a plant growing in the shade of the trees in a forest, speak differently of the secrets of the universe. They were made aware of how in the various plants the warmth and light of the Sun speak differently from the cosmic expanse in the round or serrated leaves.

And what could be revealed in this way under the influence and inspiration of the Year-God through the the letters budding forth from the Earth herself, unveiled to the pupils of the teachers in the Mysteries, in the manner of that time, secrets of the physical body of man.

The teachers pointed to the physical productiveness of the Earth, to the force of the Earth shooting into the plant. At every single place on the Earth to which the pupil's attention was directed, there was a different ‘letter.’ These letters—which were living plant-beings, or living animal forms—were then combined as we today combine single letters into words. In sharing thus in the life of Spring, man was reading in Nature. The Initiations bestowed by the Year-God consisted in this reading. And when Spring came to an end, at about the time of the month of May, man had the impression: Now I understand how out of the womb of the universe the human physical body takes shape and is formed.

Then came the Summer. The same letters and words of the great cosmic Logos were used, but it was pointed out to the pupils how under the Sun's rays which stream differently now, under its light and warmth which now work in a different way, the letters change their forms, how the first buds, which had spoken of the secrets of the human physical body, open themselves to the Sun in the blossoms. These many-colored blossoms were now letters used by the pupil; each blossom made him feel how the Sun's ray lovingly kisses the plant-forces springing up from the Earth. And in the wonderfully delicate and tender process of the cosmic forces weaving over the Earth-forces in the blossoming plants, he read the words which conveyed to him how the Earth strives outwards into the cosmic expanse. Man lived in union with the Earth as she opened herself to the Cosmos, to the distant stars, lived with the Earth herself in the infinitudes.

What lay hidden in these infinitudes revealed itself to man as he gazed at the letters which were the blossoming plants. He read out of these letters what the conditions of life had been for the human being who has descended from the spiritual worlds to physical existence on the Earth; how he had gathered together etheric substance from every quarter of the heavens to form his own etheric body. Man was thus able to read the secrets enshrined in this etheric body from everything that was now coming to pass again between the Earth and the Cosmos. The signs of the Cosmic Word are inscribed upon the very surface of the Earth when the plants blossom and particular forms of life become manifest in the animal world at the time of Midsummer.

When Autumn approached, men saw how the letters of the Cosmic Word were again changing. At this time the warmth and light of the Sun are withdrawing and the plants are obliged to have recourse to what the Sun itself has conveyed to the Earth during Summer; in return, the Earth breathes out the blossoming life she has received during Summer but at the same time develops within herself the ripening fruit which brings the cycle of plant-life to completion, inasmuch as the plant bears within it the seed, the forces of germination. Again man was able to unveil what the Cosmic Word inscribes on the surface of the Earth herself in the ripening plants; again he was able to unriddle what the forms taken by animal life in the Autumn can reveal. He read very deep secrets of the universe in the flight of birds, in all the changes that take place in the lower animals and in the insect world as Autumn approaches. The way in which the insect world becomes silent and seeks refuge in the Earth, the changes of form it undergoes—all this conveyed to him that in Autumn the Earth is in process of withdrawing into herself, communing with herself.

This was brought to expression in certain festivals that were celebrated in the latter half of September and have still left traces in country districts in the form of the Michaelmas festival. Through these festivals man reminded himself that when all the paths in the Earth which led out into the Cosmos have failed, he must unite himself with something that is not bound up with the happenings of the physical and etheric worlds, he must turn his soul to the spiritual content of the Cosmos. And even in the kind of festival that is now celebrated at Michaelmas, there is still a reminiscence of humanity turning to that Spirit of the Hierarchies who will lead men in a spiritual way when external guidance through the Stars and through the Sun has lost its power.

Through everything that man read in this way in the Autumn—a reading that was also contemplation—he steeped himself in the secrets of the human astral body. Autumn was the season when those who were initiated and inspired by the Year-God read with him the secrets of the human astral body and contemplated them under his inspiration. It was at this Autumn season that the Initiates said to their pupils: “Hold fast to the Being who stands before the Face of the Sun! (The name Micha-el is still reminiscent of this.) Think of this Being, for you will need the power when you have passed through the gate of death into the supersensible worlds, when you have to go through again whatever has remained in your astral being from Earth-existence.” Secrets of the human astral body were thus drawn from what revealed itself not only in the ripening, but also in the withering plants, and in the insects creeping away into the Earth. Man already knew that if they wished to make the astral body worthy of true manhood, their gaze must be turned to the spiritual worlds. It was for this reason that the souls of those who were candidates for Initiation were directed to the Being whom we can commemorate under the name of Micha-el.

But then came the season at the middle of which is our present Christmas. This was the time when those who were inspired and initiated by the Year-God pointed out to their pupils the mysteries that are revealed when water covers the Earth in the beautiful forms of snowflakes. The reading which in Autumn had already become reflection and contemplation, now became inner, active life; what in earlier seasons of the year had been observation, running parallel with the outer physical world, now became inner spiritual effort and activity. Life was deepened inwardly. Man knew that he can only comprehend the deepest essence of his Ego when he listens to the secrets projected by the Cosmic Word, the Cosmic Logos, into everything that takes place in Nature at the time when the Earth is swathed in her mantle of snow and when life around and on the Earth is contracted by cold. It was incumbent upon those who were initiated and inspired by the Year-God to learn to understand his writing from the indications that were given in the season of Winter. Their observation was sharpened so that it could follow the processes at work in the seeds which had been laid into the Earth, and how the insects hibernate within the closely contracting forces of the Earth. Man's gaze was led from physical light into physical darkness.

There were certain Mysteries where the pupils were told: “Now you must gaze at the Midnight Sun! You must behold the Sun through the Earth. If the eyes of your soul are filled with the power which can follow the plants and the lower animals into the Earth, then the Earth herself will become transparent to your inmost soul.” It is at the time when the Earth's forces are most contracted that man can eventually see through the Earth and behold the Sun as the Midnight Sun, for the Earth is now inwardly spiritualized; whereas at Midsummer, he beholds the Sun with his physical senses when he turns his gaze from the Earth to the Cosmos. To behold the Sun at the Midnight Hour in a deep Winter night was something which the pupils of the Initiates of the Year-God must learn. And it was their duty to communicate the secrets revealed to them by the Midnight Sun to those who were faithful followers of the Mysteries but could not themselves become Initiates or actual pupils of the Mysteries.

And more and more it came about in those ancient times that when the Initiates pointed to the Sun at the Midnight Hour in the depth of Winter, they were obliged to make known to their pupils that man on Earth feels his Ego deserted and forsaken in a certain way. The festival of Midwinter became for those possessed of the greatest knowledge more and more a festival of sadness and mourning through which it was to be brought home to man that within earthly existence he cannot find the way to his Ego, that he must learn from what is to be read in the signs written by the Logos on the Earth in Midwinter, how he with his Ego had been forsaken by the Cosmos. For it was the Earth alone of which he was aware at this time, and that for which the Ego yearns—the power of the Sun—was covered by the Earth. The Sun did indeed appear at the Midnight Hour, but man felt that the strength which would enable him to reach the Sun-Being was continually waning. At the same time, the very fact that man was made aware in this way of the loneliness of the human Ego in the Cosmos, was the prophetic indication that the Sun Being would come to the Earth, would in the course of evolution permeate the being of man, would appear in order to heal a humanity ailing on account of its loneliness in the Cosmos.

Thus even in those ancient times, intimation was given of what was to come in the evolution of man, whereby the Winter festival of sorrow and mourning would be changed—especially among the people of the South—to a festival of inner joy through the appearance of Christ upon Earth. And when this revelation descended from the Cosmos into earthly existence, those who announced the Event declared how to all men on Earth the message had gone forth that the ancient festival of mourning was now transformed into a festival of rejoicing. In the inmost depths of the Shepherds' hearts, where their dreams were woven, the words resounded: “The Godhead is revealing Himself in the Heights of the Cosmos, and peace will spring forth on Earth in men who are of good will.” Such was the proclamation in the hearts of simple Shepherds.

And at the other pole, to those who were the most deeply imbued with magical knowledge, there could come from the surviving relics of ancient Star Wisdom, the message of the entry of the Cosmic Spirit into earthly matter.

Today, when we speak of the Christmas Mystery, we must think of all that is experienced through it against the background of the ancient festival of mourning; we must think of how there has entered into the course of human evolution the power by which man can wrest himself free from everything that fetters him to the Earth. We must be able to formulate the Christmas thought in such a way that we say to ourselves: The inspirations of the Year-God which revealed to the old Initiates how in the depths of Winter the Earth withdraws from the Universe and enters into a time of self-contemplation—those inspirations are still true; man can still understand how the secret of the human Ego is connected with this secret of the year. But out of his human insight, out of his discerning feeling, out of the wisdom of his heart, he can surround himself with pictures of Christ Jesus entering into the life of men on Earth, can learn to experience in all its depths the thought of the Holy Night.

But he will only be able to experience it truly if he also has the will to follow the Christ as He reveals Himself through all the ages. The task of the Initiates of the ancient Initiation-Science was to unveil the mysteries of human nature through a profound understanding of the course of the year. We too must understand what the year reveals but we must also be able to penetrate into the inner nature of Man. And when we do this, anthroposophical Spiritual Science shows us how the letters which are written in heart and lungs, in the brain and in every part of the human organism, unveil the secrets of the Cosmos, just as those secrets were unveiled to men inspired by the Year-God in the letters of the Logos which they read in the budding plants, in the animals, and their manner of life on the Earth. We in our time must learn to look into the inner being of Man—which must become for us a script from which we read the course of human evolution, and then devote ourselves to understanding the meaning and purpose of that evolution. Through deepened vision we must unite ourselves with the spiritual forces that weave through the evolution of humanity. And because this evolution is forever advancing, we must experience the Mystery of Golgotha, the Mystery of the Holy Night, anew in every epoch. We must realize the full depth of meaning contained in words spoken by the Spirit who sought out for Himself the body that was born in Bethlehem on Christmas night: “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the days of Earth.” We must also have a spiritual ear for the perpetual revelation of the Logos through the being of Man himself. Humanity must learn to listen to the inspirations of this God of mankind, who is Christ Himself, as men learned long ago to listen to the inspirations of the Year-God.

Humanity will then not confine itself to contemplation of what is transmitted in the Bible concerning the spiritual sojourn on Earth of Christ Jesus, but will understand that ever since then, Christ has united Himself with man in earthly life, and that He reveals Himself perpetually to those who are willing to listen. Humanity in our time will then learn to understand that just as the Christmas festival once followed the Michael festival of Autumn, so the Michael-revelation which began at a time in the Autumn in the last third of the 19th century, should be followed by a sacred Christmas festival through which men will come to understand the spirit-birth needed along their path on Earth, in order that the spiritualized Earth may eventually be able to pass into future forms and conditions of existence. We are now living in an age when there should not merely be a yearly Michaelmas festival followed by a yearly Christmas festival, but when we should understand in the depths of our souls, out of our own human nature, the Michael-revelation of the last third of the 19th century, and then seek for the path leading to the true Christmas festival—when with increasing knowledge of the Spirit we shall be permeated by that same spirit.

Then we shall understand the words in the Gospel: “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.” Humanity is so constituted that it is capable of bearing more and more of Christ's teaching. Humanity is not intended only to listen to those who want to hinder progress, who point to what was once written down in barren letters concerning the Mystery of Golgotha, and who do not want the power of that Mystery to reveal itself to men as a living reality through the ages. Today is not the time to listen to those who would like to remain at a standstill in the Springtime of the world, which reveals outer physical nature in its brightest glory, but cannot reveal the Spiritual. Today is the time when the path must be found from the Michael festival to the Midwinter festival, when there should come to pass a Sunrise of the Spirit. We shall never find this path if in the evolution of man on the Earth we surrender to the illusion that there is light in external life, in external civilization, in external culture today; we must realize that in those spheres there is darkness. But in this darkness we must seek for the light which it was Christ's will to bring into the world through Jesus.

Let us then follow, with the same devotion with which the Shepherds and the Magi from the East sought the way to the Manger on that Christmas night—with the same devotion let us follow the signs which can be read in the being of man himself, in letters that are still indistinct, but will become clearer and clearer. Then it will be granted to us to celebrate anew the Christ Mystery of the Holy Night ... but only if we have the will to seek in the darkness for the light.

Today we often call by the name of ‘science,’ not that which explains the world but which instead of bringing light, sheds darkness and obscurity. These darknesses must reach out and take hold of the light!

If men do but try with depth and tenderness of feeling and with strongest power of will to find in the darkness the light of the Spirit, then that light will shine as did the Stars of heaven when the birth of Jesus was announced to the Shepherds and the Magi.

We must learn to place the Christmas thought into the historic evolution of humanity. We have not to wait for a new Messiah, for a new Christ. Much has been revealed to humanity through Nature—which in the course of the last few centuries has been leading men deep into the darkness of matter—and we must wait for what can now be revealed to humanity through understanding of the ever-living Christ Jesus.

We must not fasten the Christmas thought in a conventional yearly festival, but make it fluid and radiant, so that it will shine for us as did the Star at Bethlehem.

It was of this Light, this radiant Star, that I wished to speak to you, my dear friends, on this Christmas Eve. I would like to have done something to ensure that with the will that is inspired in you by anthroposophical Spiritual Science, you will unite that other will to follow the Star which in very truth shines forth to man all through the Holy Night. In deep and intimate stillness to permeate oneself with this Light—that is the deepest and truest Christmas consecration for our time. Everything else is in reality no more than an outward sign for this true Christmas feeling which we can carry over from this Christmas evening to Christmas morning tomorrow. Then this Holy Night can be for us not merely a symbol but a symbol that can become a living force. And we shall also be mindful of how deeply we ought to unite with the spiritual striving that in all good men leads on into the future, and at the same time is the true Christmas striving—the striving towards that Spirit who willed to incarnate in the body born in Bethlehem on the historic Christmas Night.

Today the only connection many people still have to Christmas is to light the candles on the Christmas tree. The Christmas tree is, however, the most recent symbol of Christmas.⁸¹ Even in the regions where it first appeared, people have only known it for about a hundred years. It is not the ancient pagan tradition many people believe it to be. But whilst the Christmas tree is a recent development, the great festival for humanity that is about to come is old, indeed ancient. For as long as people on earth felt, had a sense of what it means to be human, and also knew of the principle that takes us beyond being human to being divinely human, taking us beyond ourselves, they have known this sublime Christmas festival. In John's gospel we find words that may be a leitmotiv for the idea of Christmas. ‘He must wax, but I must wane.’⁸² This points to the relationship between two important annual festivals. John bears witness that he himself must wane, whilst the other one, the Christ, waxes. When the length of day is greatest, it is St John's tide. But behind the external material and ephemeral phenomenon something arises which John put most beautifully into words: ‘And the light shone into the darkness’⁸³ into the days which at St John's tide begin to get shorter. Within the darkness lives the light that is more luminous, more alive than all physical light phenomena—the light of the spirit. And the content of the Christian Christmas is the life of the great light in the darkness. When the festival was celebrated in all religions in ancient times, it pointed prophetically to Christ Jesus, the great spirit and Sun hero.

Today the science of the spirit helps us to understand Christmas, which for two millennia has been felt to be the feast of great idealism. When the service begins in that holy night, in the midnight darkness, and the candles are lit, they shine out into the darkness. It means that when the time comes and everything on earth is destined to die—everything that is purely human, too, will be subject to death—the soul triumphant lives in the body, as made to come true by the Christ, and rises from the shell of the body to live in the light, even if the earth, being physical matter, will shatter into countless atoms. Out of this darkness, this death of the earth, the soul of the whole earth will rise with all the human souls that will have been received into this earth soul. And Christ Jesus was the example, the ideal, to show that not only will the earth soul achieve this but all human beings on earth shall have the same certainty.

And so it is not only the physical sun which is a reflection of the Christ spirit but indeed the waxing sun of the spirit. When all energies will be transformed and love is aglow everywhere in the earth's body, the Christ principle will flow through every part of the earth. The light of Christmas is the symbol of this.

The three kings are symbols, as are their gifts, with gold the symbol of wisdom and kingly power, myrrh the symbol for overcoming death, incense the symbol for ether substances made spiritual in which the god enters into reality who has overcome death. With the three symbols we have Christ the king, the vanquisher of death, the fulfilment of all earthly evolution. That was the experience of the birth of the God child for every esoteric initiate, foreseen in the mysteries even before the Christ came and also experienced afterwards. The mysteries were not church establishments or schools in the ordinary sense but places of training where rites were also observed, where people learned wisdom, surrender and a faith that is both knowledge and insight. There were greater and lesser mysteries. In the lesser mysteries, people admitted after going through many trials would see dramatic presentations of the eternal truths which higher initiates experience in their own hearts. The greatest elements of human evolution may be compared, on a small scale, with the experiences someone who was born blind has after an operation. A completely new world opens up. An initiate has the eyes of the spirit opened. A world of the spirit opens up in light and colour, completely new and much wider than the physical world with all its spirits and inhabitants. All things seem full of life to him. This is the moment when initiates experience the birth of their higher self. It was known as the inner Christ festival. The experiences of those chosen people, experiences that can still be had by initiates today, were an ideal for those in the lesser mysteries, something they might hope to achieve, some sooner and some later. Anyone who knows that everyone has to go through many lives may be certain that for him, too, this awakening, this initiation will be reality one day; that the awakening of the Christ will be achieved in him, the holy night when the light will shine within him. Then the words of John will be reversed: ‘And the light shall be comprehended in the darkness.’

This was also presented in the mysteries. The great Christian event was a physical recapitulation of events every initiate had known in the mysteries, as images presented in the lesser mysteries and inside the human being in the greater mysteries. In the lesser mysteries the important experience of the inner Christ was shown at a particular time of the year, when the sun gives least light to the earth, in the longest night of winter—as is still done today at Christmas. Let us consider the image which symbolized the meaning of human inner development in the lesser mysteries. The people who were about to see it would be in a solemn mood, gathering in holy night, in the utter darkness of the midnight hour. Then a strangely booming, thundering sound would be heard, gradually changing into a wonderful rhythmic harmony—the music of the spheres. A faintly illumined body, a sphere shining dimly in the darkness would appear. This was meant to symbolize the earth. Gradually rainbow-coloured rings, one merging into the other, would arise from the dimly lit earth disk, spreading in all directions—the divine iris. That is how the sun would be seen to shine in ancient Atlantis, in the Niflheim of Norse mythology. The colours would gradually grow brighter, with the seven colours slowly turning into a faint gold and a faint violet. And the form would shine more and more brightly, with the light getting stronger, until it was transformed into the most luminous of the heavenly bodies, into the sun. In the middle of this sun the name of Christ would appear, written in the language of the people who were there. It was then true to say of those who had been present that they had seen the sun at midnight. This means that a symbol of spiritual vision had appeared to them. When their spiritual eyes had been opened they found that all matter became transparent, they saw through the earth, truly seeing the sun at midnight, having overcome matter. The sun at midnight would appear in reversed colour, a violet, reddish colour. For Christians, translated into human terms, the great cosmic symbol thus seen is Christ Jesus coming to the earth. We shall all of us see the sun at midnight. This also does not contradict the New Testament.

Christ is thus the spirit who will transfigure the elements that are still connected with the lower aspect, deify anything which is still connected with worldly aspects. He is the Sun in the realm of the spirit. That is how the Christian esoteric or theosophical Christian inwardly knows him to be. Spiritual awakening comes at the time when cold and darkness are greatest on earth because initiates know that it is the time when certain powers are present in cosmic space and the constellation is most favourable for the awakening. The pupils were taught that they should not be satisfied with ordinary human knowledge but must gain an overview over the whole of humanity, the whole of earth history. Consider the time—they would be told—when the earth was still united with sun and moon. Humanity then lived in the light of the Sun. The body that was later to become the earth was filled with a power of the spirit that also shone forth in every entity. Then the time would come when the sun separated from the earth, when the light shone down on the earth from outside and human beings were in inner darkness. This marked the beginning of their evolution towards a far distant future when they would have the light of the Sun in them again. The higher human being, Sun man, would then develop in them who bears light in him and has power to illumine.

The earth thus arose out of the light, is going through darkness and will come to have the light of the Sun again. Just as the power of the sun's rays decreases as autumn comes and in winter, so does the spiritual principle recede completely during the time when human beings must learn to perceive the external things on earth, perceive matter. But the power of the spirit waxes again, and at Christmas something happens which Paul described by using the parable of the grain of wheat. If the seed that is sown does not perish there can be no new fruit.⁸⁴

At Christmas time the old life passes away, with new life arising in its womb. The sap rises in the trees from this day on, new life wells up, light begins to wax again in the darkness that has been increasing until then. A Christian thinks of this translated into terms of the spirit. Everything that draws us down in the material world must perish to make room for new growth. The Christ came into the world so that from the depths of lowness the principle could be born that will take us to the highest. The stable in the gospel tale is a transformation, a variant of what most ancient wisdom knew as a cave. The feast would be celebrated in hollowed out rock, in different ways, depending on the nation. On the next day there would be a second feast, when it would be shown how sprouting life comes from the rock. This, too, was to show how the spiritual arises from the earthly when it dies.

In all the inner sanctuaries of Egypt, in the Eleusinian mysteries and in the Orphic cult of ancient Greece, in Asia minor, among the Babylonians and Chaldeans, in the Mythraic cult of the Persians and in the mysteries of the Indians—in all of these Christmas would be celebrated in the same way. Those who took part in the lesser mysteries would have presented to them in visible form what the initiates lived through inwardly. They would be shown a prophetic vision of the birth of the Christ in man. Initiates who had already reached that level were said to have reached the sixth stage. There were seven such stages. Stage one was the raven who mediated between the spiritual and the outside world. In the Bible we read of the raven of Elijah,⁸⁵ legend tells of Wotan's raven or the ravens of Barbarossa.⁸⁶

At the second stage the initiate would be an occult individual. He would be admitted to the sanctuary and be present within it.

The third grade was that of the warrior or fighter. Those who had reached this stage were permitted to stand up for spiritual truths before the outside world.

Someone who had reached the fourth grade would be called a lion. His conscious awareness had expanded beyond his own person and become awareness of the whole tribe. Think of the lion of the house of Judah, for instance.

An initiate of the fifth grade not only had awareness for the tribe but had taken in conscious awareness of the spirit of the nation. He would therefore be given the name of his nation, being called a ‘Persian’, for instance, among the Persians. Jesus called Nathanael ‘a true Israelite’,⁸⁷ recognizing him for an initiate of the fifth grade.

The name given to someone who had reached the sixth stage refers to an important quality. Looking at the world of nature around us, we see life forms develop from the lowest ones up to the human being, and from the average human being up to the one who let the Christ be born in him. Among the lower life forms we always see rhythm in life, a rhythm imposed by the sun. Plants always flower at the same time of the year, depending on the species, and open their flowers at the same time of day, depending on the species. Animals, too, show an annual rhythm in their most important vital functions. Only man is gradually losing this regularity. He is coming free of a rhythm that originally was also imposed on him. Yet when love for everything that is awakens in him, flows through him, a new rhythm is born that is his own. This is as regular as the sun's rhythm, which never deviates even the least bit from its orbit—one can hardly imagine what the consequences would be otherwise. An initiate of the sixth degree would be seen to reflect the movement of the sun as it pours its blessings into cosmic space, an image of the Christ in man and in the world of the spirit. The sixth degree initiate would therefore be called the sun hero.

Shivers would pass through the soul of a pupil when he saw such a sun hero in whom the Christ had been inwardly born. This was an event that was felt to be a birth on a physical plane. Initiates of the early centuries put the birth of the historical Jesus at the darkest time of the year, for the soul of the spirit had then risen. It is also why the midnight mass was introduced among the early Christians, a rite held at the dark midnight hour during which a sea of lights would be lit on the altar. The highest degree would then be that of father.⁸⁸

These things, which had happened so often in the individual mysteries, far removed from the affairs of the world, took place in the open, in world history, with Christ Jesus. There can be no more sublime experience for the human soul than the events that happened in the outer, physical world with the conqueror of death who brought the pledge of life everlasting for the soul. The new life fruit that grew from a dying world the initiates of old felt to be the birth of the Christ child in the world of the spirit. Anyone who does not think of the spiritual as separate from the physical world feels a deep connection between the sun at holy night and the life of the spirit that develops out of the world's life. In that holy night we have the birth of the greatest ideal that exists for this world and will come to realization when the earth reaches its goal. Now told in prophesy, it will one day be reality. Love conquering death shines in the lights on the Christmas tree, and in future it will come alive in all of humanity. Now it is the prospect before us.

We can thus sense that the meaning of Christmas is something that comes to us from far ahead but has also been celebrated in earliest times. Seen in the right way, the feast will again have much higher significance for us. The tree, too, will become more important to us as a symbol of that tree in paradise which you all know from the Book of Genesis. Paradise is a picture of man's higher nature, with no evil attached to it. Insight could only be gained at the price of life. A legend can show us how those who had the knowledge saw it.⁸⁹ When Seth wanted to return to paradise, the cherub with the fiery sword allowed him to enter. He found that the tree of life and the tree of knowledge had intertwined. The cherub told him to take three seeds from this united tree. The tree shows what man will be one day, something which only initiates have so far achieved. When Adam died, Seth took the three seeds and put them in Adam's mouth. A flaming bush grew out of them, with the words ejeh asher ejeh appearing in it—I am he who is, was and shall be. The legend goes on to tell that Moses made his staff with magic powers of its wood. Later the gate to Solomon's temple is said to have been made of it. A piece of it is reputed to have dropped into the pool at Bethesda and given it special powers. Finally, it is said, the cross of Christ was made of it. It is an image for life that is dying, passing away in death, and has the power in it to produce new life.

A great symbol stands before us—life that has overcome death, the wood from the seed taken from paradise. This life, dying and rising again, is the Rose Cross. It was not without reason that Goethe, that great man, said:

So long as you don't have it,
this word: ‘Die and become!’
you're but a miserable guest
here on this earth.⁵¹

It is a wonderful thing to see the relationship between the tree of paradise, the wood of the cross and the new life that grows from it. To gain an inner feeling for the birth of the eternal human being in temporal life—let that be our Christ idea, our Christmas. Man must apply it to himself even now: ‘The light shines into the darkness’, and the darkness must gradually come to comprehend the light. All the souls in whom Christmas ignites the right spark will be alive to the principle that comes to birth in them at Christmas, the ability that will become a power in them to see, to feel and to will it that the gospel words are turned around to become: ‘The light shines into the darkness, and the darkness has gradually come to grasp the light.’

• 81. See also the lectures given in Berlin on 19 Dec. 1904 (GA 92) in The Supersensible in Man and World, tr. p. M. Allen, and 21 Dec. 1909 (GA 117) in Festivals of the Seasons
• 82. John 3: 30.
• 83. John 1: 5.
• 84. 1 Cor. 15:35-44.
• 85. 1 Kings 17: 4-6.
• 86. Frederick Barbarossa (redbeard) or Frederick I, Holy Roman emperor (1152–1190), king of Germany and Italy. Led the Third Crusade, during which he drowned. Legend has it that he sleeps in the Kyffhäuser mountain until the ravens come to wake him because he is needed again. Translator.
• 87. John 1:47.
• 88. See also Steiner R. An Esoteric Cosmology (in GA 94), lecture of 30 May 1906. Tr. R. Querido. St George 1978.
• 89. See also Steiner R. The Temple Legend (GA93), especially the lecture given in Berlin on 29 May 1905. Tr. J. Wood. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1985.
• 51. Goethe, West-östlicher Diwan, poem ‘Selige Sehnsuch’

My dear friends,

When people encounter the world conception of Spiritual Science their chief desire is to have an answer to their questions, a solution of their problems. That is quite natural and understandable, one might even say justifiable. But something else must be added if the spiritual scientific-movement is really to become the living thing it must be, in accordance with the general course of evolution of earth and humanity. Above all, a certain feeling must be added, a certain perception that the more one strives to enter the spiritual world, the more the riddles increase. These riddles actually become more numerous for the human soul than they were before, and in a certain respect they become also more sacred. When we come into the spiritual scientific world concept, great life problems, the existence of which we hardly guessed before, first appear as the riddles they are.

Now, one of the greatest riddles connected with the evolution of the earth and mankind is the Christ-riddle, the riddle of Christ-Jesus. And with regard to this, we can only hope to advance slowly towards its actual depth and sanctity. That is to say, we can expect in our future incarnations gradually to have an enhanced feeling in what a lofty sense, in what an extraordinary sense this Christ-riddle is a riddle. We must not expect just that regarding this Christ-riddle much will be solved for us, but also that much of what we have hitherto found full of riddles concerning the entry of the Christ-Being into humanity's evolution, becomes still more difficult. Other things will emerge that bring new riddles into the question of the Mystery of Golgotha, or if one prefers, new aspects of this great riddle.

There is no question here of ever claiming to do more than throw some light from one or other aspect of this great problem. And I beg you to be entirely clear that only single rays of light can ever be thrown from the circuit of human conception upon this greatest riddle of man's earthly existence, nor do these rays attempt to exhaust the problem, but only to illumine it from various aspects. And so something shall here be added to what has already been said that may bring us again some understanding of one aspect of the Mystery of Golgotha.

You remember the pronouncement of the God Jahve, radiating from the far distance, which stands at the beginning of the Bible, after the Fall had come about. The words announced that now men had eaten of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil they must be banished from their present abode, so that they might not eat also of the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life was to be protected, as it were, from being partaken of by men who had already tasted of the Tree of Knowledge.

Now behind this primordial two-foldness of the eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil on the one hand and the eating of the Tree of Life on the other hand, there lies concealed something which cuts deep into life. Today we will turn our attention to one of the many applications to life of this pronouncement: we will bring to mind what we have long known: i.e., that the Mystery of Golgotha, in so far as it was accomplished within the evolution of earthly history, fell in the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch, in the Graeco-Latin age.

We know indeed that the Mystery of Golgotha lies approximately at the conclusion of the first third of the Graeco-Latin age and that two-thirds of this age follow, having as their task the first incorporation of the secrets of the Mystery of Golgotha into human evolution.

Now we must distinguish two things in regard to the Mystery of Golgotha. The first is what took place as purely objective fact: in short, what happened as the entry of the Cosmic Being ‘Christus’ in the sphere of earthly evolution. It would be-hypothetically possible, one might say, it would be conceivable, for the Mystery of Golgotha, that is, the entry of the Impulse of Christ into earthly evolution, to have been enacted without any of the men on earth having understood or perhaps even known what had taken place there. It might quite well have happened that the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place, but had remained unknown to men, that no single person would have been able to think about solving the riddle of what had actually occurred there.

This was not to be. Earthly humanity was gradually to reach an understanding of what had happened through the Mystery of Golgotha. But none the less we must realise that there are two aspects: that which man receives as knowledge, as inner working in his soul, and that which has happened objectively within the human race, and which is independent of this human race—that is to say, of its knowledge. Now, men endeavoured to grasp what had taken place through the Mystery of Golgotha. We are aware that not only did the Evangelists, out of a certain clairvoyance, give those records of the Mystery of Golgotha which we find in the Gospels; an attempt was also made to grasp it by means of the knowledge which men had before the Mystery of Golgotha. We know that since the Mystery of Golgotha not only have its tidings been given out, but there has also arisen a New Testament theology, in its various branches. This New Testament theology, as is only natural, has made use of already existing ideas in asking itself: What has actually come about with the Mystery of Golgotha, what has been accomplished in it?

We have often considered how, in particular, Greek philosophy that which was developed for instance as Greek philosophy in the teachings of Plato and Aristotle—how the ideas of Greek philosophy endeavoured to grasp what had taken place in the Mystery of Golgotha, just as they took pains to understand Nature around them. And so we can say that on the one hand the Mystery of Golgotha entered as objective fact, and on the other hand, confronting it, are the different world-conceptions which had been developed since antiquity, and which reach a certain perfection at the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha took place, and then go on evolving.

Whence were these concepts derived? We know indeed that all these concepts, including those which live in Greek philosophy and which approached the Mystery of Golgotha from the earth, are derived from a primeval knowledge, from a knowledge which could not have been at man's disposal if, let us say, an original revelation had not taken place. For it is not only amaterialistic, but an entirely nonsensical idea that the attenuated philosophy which existed at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha could at its starting point have been formed by human beings themselves. It is primeval revelation, which as we know was founded in an age when men still had the remains of ancient clairvoyance; primeval revelation which in ancient times had been given to man for the most part in imaginative form and which had been attenuated to concepts in the age when the Mystery of Golgotha entered, the Graeco-Latin age. Thus one could see an intensive stream of primeval revelation arise in ancient times, which could be given to men because they still had the final relics of the old clairvoyance that spoke to their understanding and which then gradually dried up and withered into philosophy.

Thus a philosophy, a world-conception existed in many, many shades and nuances, and these sought in their own way to comprehend the Mystery of Golgotha. If we would find the last stragglers of what was diluted at that time to a world-concept of a more philosophic character; then we come to what lived in the old Roman age.

By this Roman age I mean the time that begins approximately with the Mystery of Golgotha, with the reign of the Emperor Augustus, and flows on through the time of the Roman Empire until the migration of nations that gave such a different countenance to the European world. And what we see flare up in this Roman age like a last great light from the stream flowing from revelation—that is the Latin-Roman poetry, which plays so great a role in the education of youth even up to our own day. It is all that developed as continuation of this Latin-Roman poetry till the decline of ancient Rome. Every possible shade of world-conception had taken refuge in Rome. This Roman element was no unity. It was extended over numberless sects, numberless religious opinions, and could only evolve a certain common ground from the multiplicity by withdrawing, as it were, into external abstractions.

Through this, however, we can recognise how something withered comes to expression in the far-spread Roman element in which Christianity was stirring as a new impulse. We see how Roman thought is at great pains to seize with its ideas what lay behind the Mystery of Golgotha. We see how endeavour was made in every possible way to draw ideas from the whole range of world conception in order to understand what hid behind this Mystery of Golgotha. And one can say, if one observes closely: it was a despairing struggle towards an understanding, a real understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. And this struggle as a matter of fact continued in a certain current throughout the whole of the first millennium.

One should see, for instance, how Augustine first accepts all the elements of the old withered world-conception, and how he tries through all that he so accepts to grasp what was flowing in as living soul-blood, for he now feels Christianity flow like a living impulse into his soul. Augustine is a great and significant personality—but one sees in every page of his writings how he is struggling to bring into his understanding what is flowing to him from the Christ Impulse. And so it goes on, and this is the whole endeavour of Rome: to obtain in the western world of idea, in this world of world-conception, the living substance of what comes to expression in the Mystery of Golgotha.

What is it, then, that makes such efforts, that so struggles, that in the Roman-Latin element overflows the whole civilised world? What is it that struggles despairingly in the Latin impulse, in the concepts pulsating in the Latin language, to include the Mystery of Golgotha? What is that? That is also a part of what men have eaten in Paradise. It is a part of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. We can see in the primeval revelations when the old clairvoyant perceptions could still speak to men, how vividly alive concepts were in this ancient time, concepts which were still imaginations, and how they more and more dry up and die and become thin and poor. They are so thin that in the middle of the Middle Ages, when Scholasticism flourished, the greatest efforts of the soul were necessary to sharpen these attenuated concepts sufficiently to grasp in them the living life existing in the Mystery of Golgotha. What remained in these concepts was the most distilled form of the old Roman language with its marvellously structured logic, but with its almost entirely lost life-element. This Latin speech was preserved with its fixed and rigid logic, but with its inner life almost dead, as a realisation of the primeval divine utterance: Men shall not eat of the Tree of Life.

If it had been possible for what had evolved from the old Latin heritage to comprehend in full what had been accomplished in the Mystery of Golgotha, had it been possible for this Latin heritage, simply as if through a thrust, to gain an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, then this would have been an eating of the Tree of Life. But this was forbidden, after the expulsion from Paradise. The knowledge which had entered humanity in the sense of the ancient revelation was not to serve as a means of ever working in a living way. Hence it could only grasp the mystery of Golgotha with dead concepts.

‘Ye shall not eat of the Tree of Life’: this is a saying which also holds good through all aeons of earthly evolution with regard to certain phenomena. And one fulfilment of this saying was likewise the addition: ‘The Tree of Life will also draw near in its other form as the Cross erected on Golgotha—and life will stream out from it. But this older knowledge shall not eat of the Tree of Life.’

And so we see a dying knowledge struggling with life, we see how desperately it strives to incorporate the life of Golgotha in its concepts.¹

Now there is a peculiar fact, a fact which indicates that in Europe, confronting as it were the starting point of the East, a kind of primordial opposition was made. There is something like a sort of archetypal opposition set against the primeval-revelation² decreed to mankind. Here, to be sure, we touch upon the outer rim of a very deep-lying secret, and one can really only speak in pictures of much that is to

There exists in Europe a legend concerning the origin of man which is quite different from the one contained in the Bible. It has gone through later transformations no doubt, but its essentials are still to be recognised. Now the characteristic feature is not that this legend exists, but that it has been preserved longer in Europe than in other parts of the earth. But the important thing is that even while over in the Orient the Mystery of Golgotha had been accomplished, this different legend was still alive in the feelings of the inhabitants of Europe. Here, too, we are led to a tree, or rather to trees, which were found on the shore of the sea by the gods Wotan, Wile and We. And men were formed from two trees, the Ash and the Elm. Thus men were created by the trinity of the gods, (although this was Christianised later, it yet points to the European original revelation) by fashioning the two trees into men: Wotan gives men spirit and life; Wile gives men movement and intelligence, and We gives them the outer figure, speech, the power of sight and of hearing.

The very great difference that exists between this story of creation and that of the Bible is not usually observed—but you need only read the Bible—which is always a useful thing to do—and already in the first chapters you will remark the very great difference that exists between the two Creation legends. I should like but to point to one thing, and that is, according to the saga, a threefold divine nature flowed into man. It must be something of a soul-nature that the Gods have laid within him, which expresses itself in his form and which in fact is derived from the Gods. In Europe, therefore, man was conscious that inasmuch as one moves about on earth, one bears something divine within; in the Orient, on the contrary, one is conscious that one bears something Luciferic within one. Something is bound up with the eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil which has even brought men death, something that has turned all men away from the Gods and for which they have earned divine punishment. In Europe man is aware that in the human soul a threefold nature lives, that the Gods have sunk a force into the human soul. That is very significant.

One touches with this, as I have said, the edge of a great secret, a deep mystery. But it will be readily understood: it looks as if in this ancient Europe a number of human beings had been preserved who had not been taken away from sharing in the Tree of Life, in whom there lived on, so to say, the tree or the trees of Life; ash and elm. And with this the following fact stands in intimate harmony. European humanity (and if one goes back to the original European peoples this would be seen with great clarity in all details) actually had nothing of the higher, more far-reaching knowledge that men possessed in the Orient and in the Graeco-Latin world.

One should imagine for once the immense, the incisive contrast between the naive conceptions of European humanity, who still saw everything in pictures, and the highly evolved, refined philosophical ideas of the Graeco-Latin world. In Europe all was ‘Life’; over there all was ‘Knowledge of Good and Evil.’ In Europe something was left over, as it were, like a treasured remnant of the original forces of life; but it could only remain if this humanity were, in a way, protected from understanding anything that was contained in such marvellously finely wrought Latin concepts. To speak of a science of the ancient European population would be nonsense. One can only speak of them as living with all that germinated in their inner soul nature, that filled it through and through with life. What they believed they knew was something that was direct experience. This soul nature was destined to be radically different from the mood that was transmitted in the Latin influence. And it belongs to the great, the wonderful secrets of historical evolution, that the Mystery of Golgotha was to arise out from the perfected culture of wisdom and knowledge, but that the depths of the Mystery of Golgotha should not be grasped through wisdom; they were to be grasped through direct life.

It was therefore like a predetermined karma that—while in Europe up to a definite point life was grasped—the ego-culture appeared purely naively, vitally and full of life where the deepest darkness was; whereas over there where was the profoundest wisdom, the Mystery of Golgotha arose. That is like a predestined harmony. Out of the civilisation based on knowledge which was beginning to dry up and wither ascends this Mystery of Golgotha: but it is to be understood by those who, through their whole nature and being, have not been able to attain to the fine crystallisation of the Latin knowledge. And so we see in the history of human evolution the meeting between a nearly lifeless, more and more dying knowledge, and a life still devoid of knowledge, a life unfilled with knowledge, but one which inwardly feels the continued working of the divinity animating the world.

These two streams had to meet, had to work upon one another in the evolving humanity. What would have happened if only the Latin knowledge had developed further? Well, this Latin knowledge would have been able to pour itself out over the successors of the primitive European population: up to a certain time it has even done so. It is hypothetically conceivable, but it could not really have happened, that the original European population should have experienced the after-working of the dried up, fading knowledge.

For then, what these souls would have received through this knowledge would gradually have led to men's becoming more and more decadent; this drying, parching knowledge would not have been able to unite with the forces which kept mankind living. It would have dried men up. Under the influence of the after effects of Latin culture, European humanity would in a sense have been parched and withered. People would have come to have increasingly refined concepts, to have reasoned more subtly and have given themselves up more and more to thought, but the human heart, the whole human life would have remained cold under these fine spun, refined concepts and ideas.

I say that that would be hypothetically conceivable, but it could not really have taken place. What really happened is something very different. What really happened is that the part of humanity that had life but not knowledge streamed in among those people who were, so to say, threatened with receiving only the remains of the Latin heritage. Let us envisage the question from another side. At a definite period we find distributed over Europe, in the Italian peninsula, in the Spanish peninsula, in the region of present France, in the region of the present British Isles, certain remains of an original European population; in the North the descendants of the old Celtic peoples, in the South the descendants of the Etruscan and ancient Roman peoples. We meet with these there, and in the first place there flows into them what we have now characterised as the Latin stream. Then at a definite time, distributed over various territories of Europe, we meet with the Ostrogoths, the Visigoths, the Lombardi, the Suevi, the Vandals, etc. There is an age when we find the Ostrogoths in the south of present Russia, the Visigoths in eastern Hungary, the Langobardi or Lombard's where today the Elbe has its lower course, the Suevi in the region where today Silesia and Moravia lie, etc. There we meet with various of those tribes of whom one can say: they have ‘life’ but no ’knowledge.’

Now we can put the question: Where have these peoples gone to? We know that for the most part they have disappeared from the actual evolution of European humanity. Where have the Ostrogoths, the Visigoths, the Langobardi, etc. gone? We can ask this. In a certain respect they no longer exist as nations, but what they possessed as life exists, exists somewhat in the following way. My dear friends, let us consider first the Italian peninsula, let us consider it still occupied by the descendants of the old Roman population. Let us further imagine that on this old Italian peninsula there had been spread abroad what I have designated Latin knowledge, Latin culture; then the whole population would have dried up.

If exact research were made, it would be impossible not to admit that only incredible dilettantism could believe that anything still persists today of a blood relationship with the ancient Romans. Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Lombardi, marched in, and over these there streamed the Latin heritage—though merely mentally as seed of knowledge—it streamed over-the life-without-knowledge, and this gave it substance for continuing. Into the more southern regions there came a more Norman-Germanic element. Thus there streamed into the Italian peninsula from the European centre and the East a life-bearing population. Into Spain there streamed the Visigoths and the Suevi in order later to unite with the purely intellectual element of the Arabs, the Moors. Into the region of France there streamed the Franks and into the region of the British Isles, the Anglo-Saxon element.

The following statement expresses the truth. If the southern regions had remained populated by descendants of the old Romans, and the Latin culture had gone on working in them, they would have faced the danger of completely losing the power of developing an ego-consciousness. Hence the descendants of ancient Rome were displaced and there was poured into this region where Latinism was to spread, what came from the element of the Ostrogoths and Lombardi. The blood of Ostrogoths and Lombardi as well as Norman blood absorbed the withering Latin culture. If the population had remained Romans they would have faced the danger of never being able to develop the element of the Consciousness-soul. Thus there went to the south in the Langobardi and the Ostrogoths what we can call the Wotan-Element, Spirit and Life. The Wotan-Element was, so to say, carried in the blood of the Langobardi and Ostrogoths and this made the further evolution and unfoldment of this southern civilisation possible.

With the Franks towards the West went the Wile-element, Intelligence and Movement, which again would have been lost if the descendants of the primitive European population who had settled in these regions had merely developed further under the influence of Rome. Towards the British Isles went We, what one can call: Configuration and Speech, and in particular the faculty to see and to hear. This has later experienced in English empiricism its later development as: Physiognomics, Speech, Sight, Hearing.

So we see that while in the new Italian element we have the expression of the Folk Soul in the Sentient-soul, we could express this differently by saying: The Wotan-element streams into the Italian peninsula. And we can speak of the journeying of the Franks to the West by saying: the Wile-element streams West, towards France. And so in respect of the British Isles we can express it by saying: the We-element streams in there.

In the Italian peninsula, therefore, nothing at all is left of the blood of the original European peoples, it has been entirely replaced. In the West, in the region of modern France, somewhat more of the original population exists, approximately there is a balance between the Frankish element and the original peoples. The greatest part of the original population is still in the British Isles.

But all this that I am now saying is fundamentally only another way of pointing to the understanding of what came out of the South through Europe, pointing to the fact that the Mystery of Golgotha was ensheathed in a dying wisdom and was absorbed through a living element still devoid of wisdom.

One cannot understand Europe if one does not bear this connection in mind; one can, however, understand Europe in all details if one grasps European life as a continuous process. For much of what I have said is still fulfilling itself in our own times. So, for instance, it would be interesting to consider the philosophy of Kant, from these two original polarities of European life, and show how Kant on the one hand desires to dethrone Knowledge, take all power from Knowledge, in order on the other hand to give place to Faith. That is only a continuation of the dim hidden consciousness that one can really do nothing with knowledge that has come up from below—one can only do something with what comes down from above as original life-without-knowledge. The whole contrast in pure and practical reason lies in this: I had to discard knowledge to make way for Faith. Faith, for which protestant theology fights, is a last relic of the life-without-knowledge, for life will have nothing to do with an analysed abstract wisdom.³

But one can also consider older phenomena. One can observe how an endeavour appears among the most important leading personalities to create a harmony, as it were, between the two streams to which we have referred. For the modern physiognomy of Europe shows that up to our own day there is an after-working of the Latin knowledge in the European life, and that one can immediately envisage the map of Europe with the Latin knowledge raying out to south and west, and the Life still preserved in the centre. One can then see, for instance, how pains were taken at one time to overcome this dying knowledge. I should like to give an example. To be sure, this dying knowledge appears in the different spheres of life in different degrees, but already in the 8th-9th Century European evolution had so progressed that those who were the descendants of the European peoples with the Life could get no further with certain designations for cosmic or earthly relations which had been created in old Roman times. So even in the 8th-9th Centuries one could see that it had no special meaning for the original life of the soul when one said: January, February, March, April, May, etc. The Romans could make something of it, but the Northern European peoples could not do much with it; poured itself over these peoples in such a way as not to enter the soul, but rather to flow merely into the language, and it was therefore dying and withering. So an endeavour was made, especially towards Middle and Western Europe (over the whole stretch from the Elbe to the Atlantic Ocean and to the Apennines) to find designations for the months which could enter the feelings of European humanity. Such month-names were to be:

1. Wintarmanoth
2. Hornung
3. Lenzinmanoth
4. Ostarmanoth
5. Winnemanoth (also Nannamanoth)
6. Brachmanoth
7. Henimanoth (using the word Hay)
8. Aranmanoth (Aran = harvest)
9. Widumanoth (Wide = what is left when one has gone over the field)
10. Windumemanoth (vintage)
11. Herbistmanoth
12. Heiligmanoth

He who was at pains to make these names general was Charlemagne.

It shows how significant was the spirit of Charlemagne, for he sought to introduce something which has not up to now found entrance. We still have in the names of the months the last relics of the drying-up Latin cultural knowledge. Charlemagne was altogether a personality who aimed at many things which went beyond the possibility of being realised. Directly after his time, in the 9th Century, the wave of Latinism drew completely over Europe. It would be interesting to consider what Charlemagne desired to do in wishing to bring the radiation of the Wile-element towards the West. For the Latinising only appeared there later on.

Thus we can say that the part of mankind which has been race, which, as race, was the successor of the old Europe,—of the Europe from which the Roman influence proceeded and which itself became the successor of Rome, wholly for the south, largely for the north—has simply died out. Their blood no longer persists. Into the empty space left, there has poured in what came from Central Europe and the European East. One can therefore say: the racial element both of the European South and West is the Germanic element which is present in various shadings in the British Isles, in France, in Spain and in the Italian peninsula, though in this last completely inundated by the Latin influence.

The racial element therefore moves from East to the West and South, whereas the knowledge-element moves from South to North. It is the race-element which moves from the East to the West and South and along the West of Europe to the North, and gradually flows away towards the North. If one would speak correctly, one can talk of a Germanic race-element,-but not a Latin race. To speak of a Latin race is just as sensible as to speak of wooden iron; because Latinism is nothing that belongs to race, but something that has poured itself as bloodless knowledge over a part of the original European people. Only materialism can speak of a Latin race, for Latinism has nothing to do with race.

So we see how, as it were, the Bible saying works on in this part of European history, how the destiny of Latinism is the fulfilment of the words: ‘Ye shall not eat of the Tree of Life.’ We see how the Life given to the earth with the Mystery of Golgotha cannot come to full harmony with the old knowledge; but rather how into what remained of the ebbing original wisdom, new life had to enter. If we are to give a concrete answer to the question: Where does that remain, which from such new life has not been preserved in its own special character, but has disappeared in history, the element of the Visigoths, the Suevi, the Langobardi, the Ostrogoths, etc.? we must give as answer: It lives on as life within the Latin culture. That is the true state of affairs. That is what must be known regarding the primeval Bible two-fold utterance and its working in early times in the development of Europe, if we are to understand this European evolution.

I had to give you this historical analysis today because I shall have things to say which assume that one does not hold the false ideas of modern materialism and formalism with regard to historical evolution.

• 1. See ‘The Christmas Thought and the Mystery of the Ego. The Tree of the Cross and the Golden Legend’—Rudolf Steiner.
• 2. See Genesis 3:3—The creation of man
• 3. Gap left between these sentences

Those who look at the historical development of humanity only in terms of the sequence of cause and effect, as is customary today, will not be able to gain from history itself that which it can be in terms of forces, of impulses for the individual human being, if one tries to penetrate into the true essence of this historical becoming. Historical development can only reveal itself to someone who is able to perceive a wise working through the succession of facts. Today it is almost the case that one is of the opinion that anyone who sees a wise event in the context of the world and especially in the historical development of humanity is indulging in superstition and attributing to things something that only he himself has thought up. However, one must not impose one's own ideas onto things. One must not force one's way of thinking onto things, but one must try to let things speak for themselves. If one is open enough, one will perceive something like an active wisdom everywhere in historical development, especially at significant turning points in human evolution.

Now, one of the things that has emerged from history is, above all, the establishment of the individual festive days of the year, especially the great festive days. It is striking when we realize that Christmas is a so-called fixed feast, falling every year near the winter solstice, on December 24 and 25. In contrast to this, Easter is a so-called movable feast, which appears to be arranged according to the constellation of the sun and moon, the observation of which is thus, to a certain extent, brought in from the extra-terrestrial cosmos. It is the case that if a person takes these festive days of the year seriously, they have a meaning for their life, they are significant in their life. That is what they should be. Meaningful, penetrating thoughts should arise on these festive days. Profound feelings and emotions should well up from the heart and soul. It is precisely through what we experience inwardly during such festive seasons that we should feel connected to the passage of time and to that which is effective in the course of time.

Now, these festive seasons have been fixed for certain historical reasons, and one has to reflect on such a fact that Christmas is an immovable festival and Easter is a movable one, that Christmas falls at a time when the earth is, so to speak, most closed off from the influences of the extraterrestrial cosmos. When the sun has the least effect on the earth, when the earth, out of its own forces, which it has retained from the summer and autumn season, produces its own covering for the shortest days, when the earth, out of itself, makes what it can with its own forces with the least influence from the cosmos, we celebrate Christmas. |

When the time begins again when the earth experiences the most significant influences from the extraterrestrial cosmos, when the warmth of the sun, the light of the sun, causes vegetation to grow out of the ground, when heaven, so to speak, works together with the earth to weave the earth's garment, then we celebrate Easter. And in that such conceptions have emerged from the thoughts of humanity, not in an abstract way conceived by the one or the other arbitrarily, but from thoughts that have, as it were, permeated humanity through long epochs, that have developed themselves, into the historical evolution something has flowed that, when recognized, at the same time evokes the possibility of deeply venerating it, the possibility of looking back to the times of our ancestors with reverence, devotion, and love. And by drawing attention to something like this, one can indeed say: Contemplation of the active wisdom in historical becoming allows those forces and impulses to emerge from this history that can then, in the right way, become rooted in the human soul and work in the human soul in the right way.

Christmas, as we celebrate it today at the shortest time of the year, on December 24th and 25th, has only been celebrated in the Christian Church since the year 354. It is not usually thought about in a forceful way that even in Christian-Catholic Rome in the year 353, Christmas, the celebration of the birth of Christ, was not celebrated on that day. It is one of the most interesting aspects of historical reflection to see how this Christmas celebration has become established, out of a historical instinct and from deeper sources of wisdom, which may have worked largely unconsciously.

Something similar, but fundamentally different, was celebrated before: January 6, which was the Feast of the Epiphany of Christ. And this Feast of the Epiphany of Christ meant the remembrance of the baptism of John in the Jordan. This Feast of the Baptism of John in the Jordan was celebrated in the first centuries of Christianity as the most important. And only from the time I have indicated does the Feast of the Epiphany of Christ, the Feast of the Baptism of John in the Jordan, so to speak, wander through the twelve holy nights back to December 25 and is replaced by the Feast of the Birthday of Christ Jesus. This is connected with deep, meaningful inner processes of the historical development of Christianity.

What does the fact that in the first centuries of the Christian worldview the memory of the baptism of John in the Jordan was celebrated indicate? What does this baptism of John in the Jordan mean? This baptism of John in the Jordan signifies that from the heights of heaven, for extraterrestrial, cosmic reasons, the entity of the Christ descends and unites with the entity of the man Jesus of Nazareth. This baptism of St. John in the Jordan therefore signifies a fertilization of the earth from cosmic expanses. This baptism of St. John in the Jordan signifies an interpenetration of heaven and earth. And in celebrating the Feast of the Epiphany, we celebrated a supersensible birth, the birth of the Christ in the thirty-year-old man Jesus.

In the first centuries of Christian development, attention was focused primarily on the appearance of Christ on earth, and of less importance, alongside this view of the appearance of an extraterrestrial Christ-being in the earthly realm, was the earthly birth of the man Jesus of Nazareth, who only received the Christ in his own body when he was thirty years old. This was the conception in the early centuries of Christianity. In these centuries, therefore, the descent of the supermundane Christ was celebrated. And an attempt was made to understand what had actually happened in the course of his incarnation.

If we allow the historical development up to the Mystery of Golgotha to take effect on us, it presents itself in such a way that in primeval times humanity was endowed with an original wisdom of a supersensible kind, an original wisdom that one must have the deepest reverence for if one is able to contemplate it in its entire inwardness, in its entire essence. In the first, only externally childlike appearing wisdom of mankind, an infinite amount is revealed not only about the earthly, but above all about the extra-earthly, and how the extra-earthly affects the earth. Then one sees how, in the course of the development of mankind, this light of primeval wisdom shines less and less in human minds, how people increasingly lose touch with this primeval wisdom. And this primeval wisdom has faded and disappeared from the human mind precisely in the time when the Mystery of Golgotha was approaching. All phenomena of historical development in Greek and especially in Roman life show in the most diverse ways that precisely the best of humanity were aware that a new heavenly element must enter into earthly life so that the earth and humanity could continue to develop.

For the unprejudiced observer, the entire evolution of mankind on earth falls into two parts: the time that waited for the Mystery of Golgotha, waited not only in the simple, childlike minds of men, but waited with the highest wisdom — and in the part that then follows on from the Mystery of Golgotha, in which we are immersed and for which we hope for an ever broader and broader fulfillment, again in the supersensible world, again in the influence of the extraterrestrial cosmic reality on earthly events within the evolution of the earth. Thus the Mystery of Golgotha stands at the very center of earthly evolution, giving it its true meaning.

I have often tried to express this pictorially for my listeners by saying that one should look at something like the significant painting by Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper in Milan, which unfortunately no longer exists in its artistic perfection. How one sees the Redeemer within His Twelve, how one sees Him contrasted on one side with John and on the other with Judas, and how one then has the whole thing before one in its coloring. And here, precisely with regard to this most characteristic image, when contemplating the Mystery of Golgotha, one must say: If any being were to come down to Earth from a foreign heavenly body, it would in the outer reality, would be amazed, for we must assume that such a being from another planet would have a completely different environment around it, and it would be amazed at all the things that human beings have created on earth. But if he were to be led to this picture, in which this Mystery of Golgotha is shown in its most characteristic form, he would intuitively sense something of the meaning of earthly existence from this picture, simply through the way in which Christ Jesus is placed among his twelve disciples, who in turn represent the whole human race.

One can sense the way in which the Mystery of Golgotha actually gives meaning to the evolution of the earth from the most diverse backgrounds. But one only fully senses that this is the case when one can rise to the vision that with the baptism of John in the Jordan a supersensible being, the Christ, has entered into a human being. This is how the Gnostics saw it, not with the world view that we are again trying to gain today through anthroposophy, but with their world view, which was the last remnant of the ancient wisdom of mankind. One might say that so much of the instinctive wisdom of humanity remained that, in the first centuries after Christ's appearance, a number of people were still able to grasp what actually happened with the appearance of Christ on earth. The wisdom that the Gnostics had can no longer be ours. We must, because humanity must be in a state of continuous progress, advance to a much more conscious, less instinctive view of the supersensible as well. But we look with reverence at the wisdom of the Gnostics, who had retained so much of the first instinctive primal wisdom of man that one could grasp the full significance of the Mystery of Golgotha.

From this comprehension of the full significance of the Mystery of Golgotha and of the central phenomenon of John's baptism in the Jordan, the first great festival was established. But it was already so arranged in the developmental history of mankind that the ancient wisdom was dying out and becoming paralyzed. And it was precisely in the fourth century A.D. that one could do nothing with this ancient wisdom. Yesterday I presented another point of view, showing how this ancient wisdom gradually darkened. In a certain sense, the fourth century is the one in which man made the first beginning of being completely dependent on himself, having nothing around him for his contemplation other than what the senses can perceive and what the combining mind can make of the sensory perception. In order to gain its freedom, which could never have been gained through dependence on unearthly things, if ancient wisdom had not been paralyzed, humanity had to lose ancient wisdom, had to be thrown into materialistic observation. This materialistic outlook first appeared at dawn in the fourth century A.D. and grew stronger and stronger until it reached its culmination in the nineteenth century.

Materialism also has its good side in the history of the development of mankind. The fact that man no longer had the supersensible light shining into his mind, the fact that he was dependent on what he saw with his senses in the world around him, gave rise to the independent power within him that tends towards freedom. It also appeared wise in the developmental history of humanity that materialism has emerged. But precisely at the time when materialism took hold of the earthly nature of man, it was no longer possible to understand how the influence of the extraterrestrial, the heavenly, in the symbol of John's baptism in the Jordan presented itself to humanity. As a result, people lost their understanding of the meaning of the Feast of Epiphany, January 6, and resorted to other explanations. All the feelings and emotions that were related to the Mystery of Golgotha were no longer associated with the supermundane Christ, but began to be associated with the earthly Jesus of Nazareth. And so the Feast of the Epiphany of Christ became the Feast of the Epiphany of the Child Jesus. Admittedly, the development has taken a course that has now reached a peripeteia, which must create new necessities in the striving of humanity for our present-day world view.

We see how, as early as the 4th century, human beings' full and wise comprehension of the impossibility of comprehending the appearance of Christ was already confronted with it. But human feeling, human perception, human emotion and will develop in the course of history at a slower pace than thoughts. While thoughts had long since ceased to be directed towards the appearance of Christ, hearts still turned to this appearance of Christ. Deeply intimate feelings lived on in Christendom. And these profound feelings now formed the content of historical development for many centuries. And these profound feelings expressed it - but as if from instinctive impulses - what a significant event the appearance of Christ was for the development of the earth. The festival of the birthday of Jesus of Nazareth was connected to the Adam and Eve Day, the festival of the beginning of the earth of mankind. Adam and Eve Day falls on December 24, and Jesus' birthday celebration on December 25. In Adam and Eve, people saw the beings with whom the evolution of the earth began, the beings who descended from spiritual heights, who became sinful on earth, who became entangled on earth in material events, who lost their connection with the supersensible worlds. The first Adam was spoken of in the Pauline sense; and the second Adam was spoken of as the Christ: that man can only be fully man in the post-Christian era if he unites within himself the forces that fell away from God through Adam and the forces that through Christ bring him back to God. This was expressed by bringing together the Adam and Eve festival and the Jesus birthday festival. The sense of this connection, which gives earthly life its true meaning, has been preserved in a heartfelt way over the centuries.

One example of this is the occurrence of the very heartfelt 'Paradeisspiele' (Paradise Plays) and 'Christi-Geburtspiele' (Plays about the Nativity), of which we have brought samples to be performed here, which date from the last Middle Ages, from the beginning of the modern era, when German tribes living in the western regions took them with them to the east. In present-day Hungary, such tribes settled. We find such tribes north of the Danube in the Pressburg area, we find them south of the Carpathians in the so-called Spiš area, we see them in Transylvania. We find mainly Alemannic-Saxon tribes in these areas. We then find Swabian tribes in the Banat. All these German tribes took with them the one thing from their original homeland that had been imbued with the most heartfelt sentiments, which united humanity during these centuries with the most important experience on earth.

But human wisdom increasingly took a course that also intertwined the Christ event with the materialistic conception of the world. In the nineteenth century we see the rise of a materialistic theology. The criticism of the Gospels begins. The possibility of having an inkling — as must be the case with supersensible representations — that what appears as an imagination of the supersensible is different depending on whether it is viewed from one point of view or another, is lost. One has no conception of the fact that the sages of former centuries must also have recognized the so-called contradictions in the Gospels and that they did not criticize them in a critical way. One sinks philistinely into these contradictions in the Gospels. One resolves the contradictions, one removes everything supersensible from the Gospels. One loses the Christ out of the story of the Gospel. One tries to make something out of the story of the Gospels, something like an ordinary, profane story. Gradually, one can no longer distinguish what the theological historians say from what a secular historian like Ranke says about the Mystery of Golgotha.

When one looks for the figure of Jesus in the famous historian Ranke, as he presents him as the simple but most outstanding human being who ever walked the earth, when one reads all the lovingly described in Ranke's profane history, one can hardly tell the difference between this and what the materialistic theologians of the 19th century had to say about Jesus. Theology is becoming materialistic. Precisely for enlightened theology, the Christ disappears from the view of humanity. The “simple man from Nazareth” is gradually becoming that which only those who undertake to describe the essence of Christianity want to point to. And Adolf Harnack's description of the essence of Christianity has become famous.

In this book, “The Essence of Christianity” by Adolf Harnack, there are two passages that could be truly devastating for anyone who has a sense for the real essence of Christianity. The first is that this theologian, who wants to be a Christian, says that the Christ does not actually belong in the Gospels, that the Son does not belong in the Gospels; only the Father belongs in the Gospels. And so Christ Jesus, who walked the earth in Palestine at the beginning of our era, becomes simply the human proclaimer of the Father's teaching. The Father alone belongs in the Gospels, says Adolf Harnack, and yet he believes himself to be a Christian theologian! One must say: the essence of Christianity has completely disappeared from this “Essence of Christianity”, I mean that which Adolf Harnack describes, and actually such a view should no longer call itself Christian.

The other thing that can have a devastating effect in this writing “The Essence of Christianity” occurred to me once when I was present at a lecture given in a society called the Giordano Bruno Society. In connection with the remarks of a speaker there, I had to say how the most important part of the essence of Christianity has disappeared from modern theology. I had to point to Harnack's remark in this book “The Essence of Christianity,” where he says: Whatever may have happened in the Garden of Gethsemane, the idea of resurrection, the Easter faith, emerged from this event; and it is this faith that we want to hold on to. — So the resurrection itself has become unimportant to modern Christian theologians. They do not want to concern themselves with this resurrection as a fact. Whatever may have happened in the Garden of Gethsemane, people have begun to believe that the resurrection occurred there, and it is not the resurrection that we want to hold on to, but this belief.

I pointed out at the time that the essence of Christianity had been expressed by Paul, who said, based on his experiences outside Damascus: And if the Christ had not been resurrected, we would all be lost. Not the man Jesus is the essential thing in Christianity, but the supersensible entity, which through the baptism of John in the Jordan entered into the man Jesus, which arose from the tomb at Gethsemane, and which became visible to those who had the capacity for such visibility. Paul, as the latest of them, saw it, and Paul refers to the risen Christ. I therefore had to point out at the time how the remark of one of the most famous modern so-called Christian theologians fails to see the very essence of Christianity, its supersensible nature. The chairman of the society replied to me in a most peculiar way at the time. He said that such a thing could not be contained in Harnack's book, for Harnack was a Protestant theologian, and if Harnack asserted such a thing, it would be on a par with an assertion that could only come from the Catholic side, for example, about the Holy Robe of Trier. For the Catholic, it is not important whether it can be proven that this holy robe in Trier really comes from Jerusalem, but rather that faith is attached to this holy robe. The chairman of this society was so embarrassed that he did not even admit that this remark was in Harnack's book. I told him that since I did not have the book at hand, I would write him the page number on a postcard the next day. This is also characteristic of the modern thoroughness with which books are read that have an importance in the first place. You read a book and believe that it makes a significant impression on life, and you do not even notice one of the most important remarks, but you think it is impossible that it could be in it. It is in it! All this proves to us how the supersensible Christ has been thrown out of the evolution of humanity by a theology that is becoming ever more materialistic, how people have clung only to the outward physical appearance of the man Jesus.

Now, the festive customs and dedications of the simple minds that resorted to Christmas plays were beautiful; they arose from sacred feelings. Even if people could no longer provide each other with more information about the full meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha, they also had it in their hearts where they outwardly adhered to the material appearance of the child Jesus. And in this form, the celebration of the birth of Christ is beautiful and heartfelt.

The thought that destroys the Christ in the man Jesus is not beautiful and, from the highest point of view, it is not true, even from the Christian world view. It is as if the wisdom-filled guidance of humanity had first taken into account what had to happen in order for the materialistic view and thus the development of humanity to freedom to begin and continue. Just as materialism had to come in order to liberate humanity, so the Feast of the Epiphany, which can only be understood through supersensible vision and falls on January 6, had to be moved back to the Feast of the Nativity, December 25.

The twelve holy nights lie in between. In a sense, humanity made its way back through the entire zodiac by going through a twelvefold number, at least in the symbol, when this festival was moved.

Today, by summarizing everything that is connected with the Christ through the man Jesus, we can certainly unfold all the intimacy and depth of feeling for Christmas. And in my Christmas meditation yesterday, I wanted to express in words what is beneficial in this respect for the present time. But we must, after materialism has celebrated its highest triumphs in theology, after Christ Jesus has become, precisely for enlightened theology, only the simple man Jesus, again find our way back to the intuition of the supersensible, extraterrestrial Christ-being.

If you come with this point of view, then you will make enemies of precisely the materialistic theology of today. Just as the sun materially sends down its light from extraterrestrial cosmic expanses, so the spiritual sun of Christ descended to men and united with Jesus of Nazareth. Just as one can see the revelation of the soul and spirit in the outer physiognomy of man, in his facial features and in his gestures, so one can see the outer physiognomy in that which takes place in the cosmos, in the gestures that are into the cosmos through the course of the stars, in that which, as the inner warmth of the soul of the universe, manifests itself externally through the radiation of the sun, in that one can see the outer physiognomy of what permeates the whole world spiritually and soulfully. And in the concentrated spiritual descent of Christ upon the earth, one can see the inward aspect as the outward physiognomy of the concentrated rays of the sun streaming down upon the earth. And one will understand in the right way when it is said: The solar nature of Christ descended upon the earth.

We must come back to this supersensible understanding of Christ. We must learn to direct our thoughts back to the other birth, which took place as an extra-terrestrial birth through the baptism of St. John in the Jordan, despite the heartfelt devotion we wish to preserve for the birthday of Jesus, for which Christmas alone has become. We also want to learn to understand what takes place in the Jordan baptism of John in a meaningful historical symbol before our soul, as well as what happened in the stable of Bethlehem or in Nazareth. We want to learn to understand the words as they are communicated in the Gospel of Luke in the right way: This is my son, today he was born to me. — We want to learn to understand the Christmas mystery in such a way that it becomes for us again the source of understanding for the appearance of Christ on earth. We want to learn to understand the birth of the spirit in addition to the memory of our physical birth.

Such an understanding can only gradually arise from a general spiritual comprehension of the mysteries of the universe. We must gradually struggle towards a spiritual conception of the mystery of Golgotha. To do this, however, we need insight into the origin of such impulses within the earthly development of humanity, as there was in the 4th century AD, when the Feast of the Epiphany of Christ was moved from January 6 to the day of Jesus' birthday on December 25 out of the innermost need of developing humanity. One must learn to see how the wise guidance of human history works there. One must learn to devote oneself to this historical development with one's whole being. Then one will recognize the wise guidance in human history without superstition, and without bringing one's own fantasies into it. One must learn not only to immerse oneself in history with abstract ideas and to look at cause and effect, but one must learn to devote oneself to this historical development with one's whole being. Only then will we understand what makes our time a truly transitional time, a time in which a spiritual world view must again be wrested from the materialistic view, and a natural elevation to the supersensible must again be wrested. And an expression for this elevation to the supersensible will be a new understanding of the appearance of Christ on earth, the mystery of Golgotha.

Thus for the modern man who is really able to delve into the spirit of the time, Christmas has a twofold significance: it is that which has been approaching through recent history since the 4th century AD, that which has produced such wonderful has produced such wonderful beauties precisely in the simple, unadorned folk tradition, and that which still arouses our heartfelt delight today when we see it again in the renewal of folk plays such as we are attempting through our anthroposophical science. It is all that human warmth and affection has poured into life through the centuries during which the idea of Christianity has taken on more and more materialistic forms, until in the 19th century it has come so far that it must turn around through its own absurdity and return to the spiritual. This gives us, as people of today, the second thing about Christmas: in addition to the feeling that we have for the traditional Christmas that has been handed down since the 4th century AD, for this heartfelt feeling that we want to feel with, a new Christmas should be born from our contemporary understanding, a second Christmas to the old Christmas.

The Christ shall be reborn anew through humanity. Christmas is traditionally a celebration of the birth of Jesus; in spirit it shall become a celebration of the birth of a new conception of Christ, not new in relation to the first centuries, but new in relation to the centuries since the 4th century AD. And so Christmas itself should not be just a celebration of the memory of the birth, but, as it is experienced from year to year in the near future, it should become a direct, contemporary birthday celebration, the celebration of a present-day event. This birth of the new Christ-idea must come to pass. And Christmas must become so intense that every year at this very time man will be able to reflect anew and with special intensity on the fact that a new Christ-idea must be born.

Christmas must become a festival not of remembrance but of the present, a consecration of that which the human being experiences as a birth in his immediate present. Then it will truly enter into our more recent historical becoming, then it will strengthen itself more and more in this historical becoming of humanity, also into the future, which will have such need of it. Then it will become a consecration of the world.

If you were in the Cologne Cathedral last night you could have seen there in illuminated lettering: C.M.B. As is well known, these letters represent the names of the so-called Three Holy Kings, according to the tradition of the Christian Church called: Caspar, Melchior, Balthasar. For Cologne these names awaken quite special memories. An old legend tells us that the Three Holy Kings had become bishops and sometime after they had died their bones had been brought to Cologne. Related to this is another legend which tells that a Danish king had once come to Cologne, bringing with him three crowns for the Three Holy Kings. After he had returned home he had a dream. In his dream the three kings appeared to him and offered him three chalices—the first chalice contained gold, the second frankincense, and the third one myrrh. When the Danish king awoke the three kings had vanished, but the chalices had remained. There before him stood the three gifts which he had retained from his dream.

In this legend there is profound meaning. It is hinted to us that the king in his dream attained a certain insight into the spiritual world by which he learnt the symbolic meaning of the three kings. These three Magi of the Orient brought offerings of gold, frankincense and myrrh at the birth of Jesus Christ. From his realisation he retained a lasting possession: those three human virtues, which are symbolised in the gold, the frankincense and the myrrh—self-knowledge in the gold; self-devoutness, that is the devoutness of the innermost self, or self-surrender, in the frankincense; and self-perfection and self-development, or the preservation of the eternal in the self, in the myrrh.

How was it possible for the king to receive these three virtues as gifts from another world? He received this possibility because he had endeavoured to penetrate with his whole soul into the profound symbolism lying concealed in the three kings who brought their offerings to Jesus Christ.

There are many features in this Christ legend which lead us deeply into the most diverse meanings of the Christ Principle, and what it is to bring about in the world. Among the profoundest features of the Christ-legend are the adoration and the sacrifice by the three Magi, the three Oriental Kings, and we must not approach this fundamental symbolism of Christian tradition without a deeper understanding. Later the view developed that the first king was the representative of the Asiatic peoples; the second, the representative of the European peoples; and the third king, the representative of the African peoples. Wherever Christianity was to be understood as the religion of earthly harmony, the three kings and their homage were more often seen as a union of the various streams and religious movements in the world into the one principle, the Christ principle.

When this legend took shape, those who had penetrated into the mystery principles of esoteric Christianity saw in the Christ principle not only a force which had intervened in the course of human development, but they saw in the being that Jesus of Nazareth embodied a cosmic world-force—a force far transcending the humaneness that prevails merely in our present time. They saw in the Christ Principle a force that indeed represents for mankind a human ideal, part of a far distant future development, an ideal which can only be approached by man when he increasingly grasps the whole world in the spirit. They saw in man, in the first place, a small being, a small world, a microcosm, an image of the macrocosm, the great all-embracing world. This macrocosm comprises all that man can perceive with his external senses, see with his eyes, hear with his ears, but comprises, besides, all that the spirit could perceive including the perceptions of the least developed to those of the most clairvoyant spirit. This was how the world appeared to the esoteric Christian of the earliest times. All he saw in the firmament and on our Earth, all he saw as thunder and lightning, as storm and rain, as sunshine, as the course of the stars, as sunrise and sunset, as moonrise and the setting of the Moon—all this was for him a gesture, something like a facial expression, an external expression of inner spiritual processes.

The esoteric Christian views the world structure as he views the human body. When he looks at the human body, he sees it as consisting of different limbs: the head, arms, hands, and so on. When he looks at the human body he sees hand movements, eye movements, movements of the facial muscles, but the separate limbs and their movements are for him the expression of inner spiritual and psychic experiences. In the same way as he looked at the human limbs and their movements and perceived that which is the eternal spiritual in man—the esoteric Christian regarded the movements of the celestial bodies, the light that streams down from the celestial bodies to humanity, the rising and setting of the Sun, the rising and setting of the Moon, as the external expression of divine-spiritual Beings pervading all space. All these natural phenomena were to him deeds of the Gods, gestures of the Gods, mimic expressions of those divine-spiritual Beings. As was also everything that occurs among mankind, when people establish social communities, when they submit to moral rules and regulate their dealings through laws, when from the forces of nature they create tools for themselves—indeed they make these tools with the help of the forces of nature, but in a form in which they have not been directly provided by nature. All that was done by man more or less unconsciously, was for the esoteric Christian the external expression of inner divine-spiritual sway.

But the esoteric Christian did not confine himself to such general forms. He pointed to quite definite single gestures, single parts of the physiognomy of the universe, of the mimic of the universe, to see in these single parts quite definite expressions of the spiritual. When he pointed to the Sun he said, “The Sun is not merely an external, physical body. This external, physical solar body is the body of a psychic-spiritual Being who rules over those psychic-spiritual Beings who are the governors, the leaders of all earthly fate, the leaders of all external natural occurrences on Earth, but also of all that happens in human social life, in the lawful conduct of men among each other.” When the esoteric Christian looked up to the Sun, he revered in the Sun the external revelation of his Christ. In the first place the Christ was for him the Sun's soul, and the esoteric Christian said: “From the beginning the Sun was the body of the Christ, but human beings on Earth and the Earth itself were not yet matured for receiving the spiritual light, the Christ-light, which streams from the Sun. Mankind, therefore, had to be prepared for the Christ-light.”

Then the esoteric Christian looked up at the Moon and saw that the Moon reflects the light of the Sun, but more feeble than the Sun's light itself; and he said to himself: “When I look at the sun with my physical eyes, I am blinded by its radiant light; if I look into the Moon I am not blinded; it reflects to a lesser degree the radiant light of the Sun.” In this weakened sunlight, in this moonlight pouring down upon the Earth, the esoteric Christian saw the physiognomic expression of the old Jehovah-principle, the expression of the religion of the old law. And he said: “Before the Christ Principle, the Sun of Righteousness, could appear on Earth, the Jahve Principle had to prepare the way by sending this light of Righteousness, toned down in the Law to the Earth .”

What lay in the old Jehovah-principle, in the old law, the spiritual light of the Moon, was for the esoteric Christian the reflected spiritual light of the higher Christ Principle. And like the confessors of the ancient Mysteries, the esoteric Christian—until far into the Middle Ages—saw in the Sun the expression of the spiritual light ruling the Earth, the Christ-light. In the Moon they saw the expression of the reflected Christ-light, which would blind man in its full strength. In the Earth itself the esoteric Christian saw, like the confessors of the ancient Mysteries, that which at times disguised, and veiled for him the blinding sunlight of the spirit. The Earth was for him just as much the physical expression of a spirit, as was every other bodily form an expression of something spiritual. He imagined that when the Sun could be seen shining down on the Earth, when it sent down its rays, beginning in the spring and continuing through the summer, and called forth from the Earth all the budding and sprouting life, and when it had culminated in the long summer days—then the esoteric Christian imagined that the Sun maintained the external up-shooting life, the physical life. In the plants, springing from the soil, in the animals unfolding their fertility in these seasons, the esoteric Christian saw the same principle in an external physical form, that he saw in the beings whose external expression the Sun was. But when the days became shorter, when autumn and winter approached, the esoteric Christian said, the Sun withdraws its physical power more and more from the Earth. But to the same degree as the Sun's physical power is withdrawn from the Earth, its spiritual power increases and flows to the Earth most intensively when the shortest days come, with the long nights, that later were fixed by the Christmas festival.

Man cannot see this spiritual power of the Sun. He would see it, said the esoteric Christian, if he possessed the inner power of spiritual vision. The esoteric Christian was still conscious of the fundamental conviction and fundamental knowledge of the Mystery-pupils from the earliest times into the newer age.

During those nights, now fixed by the Christmas festival, the Mystery-pupils were prepared for the experience of inner spiritual vision, so that they could see inwardly, spiritually, that which at this time most withdraws its physical power from the Earth. In the long Christmas winter night, the Mystery-pupil was far enough advanced to have a vision at midnight. Then the Earth was no longer covering up the Sun,¹ which stood behind the Earth. It became transparent for him. Through the transparent Earth he saw the spiritual light of the Sun, the Christ-light. This fact, which marks a profound experience for the Mystery-student, was captured in the expression, “To see the Sun at midnight”.

There are regions where the churches, otherwise open all day, are closed at noon. This is a fact which connects Christianity with the traditions of ancient religious faiths. In ancient religious confessions the Mystery-students, on the strength of their experience, said, “At noon, when the Sun stands highest, when it unfolds the strongest physical power, the Gods are asleep, and they sleep most deeply in summer, when the Sun develops its strongest physical power. But they are widest awake on Christmas night, when the external physical power of the Sun is weakest.”

We see that all forms of life which desire to unfold their external physical strength look up to the Sun when the Sun rises in spring, and strive to receive the external physical power of the Sun. But when, on a summer noon, the Sun's physical power pours most lavishly on to the Earth, the Sun’s spiritual power is weakest. In the winter midnight, however, when the Sun rays the least physical power down to the Earth, man can see the Sun's spirit through the Earth, which has become transparent for him. The esoteric Christian felt that by immersing himself in Christian esotericism he approached more and more that power of inward vision through which he could completely fulfil his feeling, thinking and his will-impulses by gazing into this spiritual sun. Then the Mystery-student was led to a vision of highly real significance: As long as the Earth is opaque, the separate parts appear to be inhabited by people of different confessions, but the unifying bond is not there. Human races are as scattered as the climates. Human opinions are scattered all over the Earth and there is no connecting link. But to the degree in which human beings begin to look through the Earth into the Sun by their inner power of vision, to the degree in which the “star” appears to them through the Earth, their confessions will reconcile to form one great united human brotherhood. And those who guided the great separated human masses in the truth of the higher planes, towards their initiation into the higher worlds, were known as “Magi.” Whilst in the various parts of the Earth most diverse powers come to be expressed, there were three Magi. Humanity had, therefore, to be led in different ways. But as a unifying power there appears the star, rising beyond the Earth. It leads the scattered individuals together, and then they bring offerings to the physical embodiment of the solar star, appearing as the star of peace. Thus was the religion of peace, of harmony, of universal peace, of human brotherhood, placed in context cosmically and humanely with the ancient Magi, who laid the best gifts they had for humanity before the cradle of the Son of Man incarnate.

The legend has retained this beautifully, by saying that the Danish king attained an understanding of the Wise Men, of the three Kings, and because he had attained it they bestowed on him their three gifts: first the gift of wisdom, in self-knowledge; secondly, the gift of pious devotion, in self-surrender; and, thirdly, the gift of the victory of life over death, in the power and fostering of the eternal in the self.

All those who have understood Christianity in this way, have seen in it the profound idea of spiritual science of the unification of religions. For they had the firm conviction that whoever understands Christianity thus, can rise to the highest grade of human development.

One of the last of the Germans to understand Christianity esoterically in this way is Goethe. Goethe has laid down for us this kind of Christianity, this kind of religious reconciliation, this kind of Theosophy, in the profound poem, The Mysteries. Although it has remained a fragment² the inner spiritual development of one who is penetrated and convinced by the feelings and ideas that were just described.

We learn first, how Goethe invites us to follow the pilgrim-path of such a man, but indicates that this pilgrim-path may lead us far astray. It is not easy for man to find it, and one must have patience and devotion to reach the goal. Whoever possesses these will find the light that he seeks. Let us hear the beginning of the poem:

A wondrous song is here prepared for many.
Hear it with joy! Tell all from far and near!
The way will lead you out o'er mount and valley;
Now is the view obscured, now wide and clear,
And if the path should glide into the bushes,
That you have gone astray, you need not fear,
For by a persevering, patient climb
We shall draw near our goal, when it is time.

But no one will, despite profound reflection,
Unravel all the wonders hidden here:
Our mother earth brings forth so many flowers,
And many shall find something to revere;
Maybe that one will gloomily forsake us,
Another stays with gestures full of cheer:
For many wand'ring pilgrims flows the spring,
To each a different pleasure it will bring.

This is the situation into which we are put. We are shown a pilgrim who, if we were to ask him, would not be able to say, based on his understanding, what we have just explained to be the esoteric Christian idea—but a pilgrim, in whose heart and soul these ideas live transformed into feelings. It is not easy to discover everything that has been secreted into this poem called The Mysteries. Goethe has clearly indicated a process occurring within a person in whom the highest ideas, thoughts and conceptions are transformed into feelings and emotions. What causes this transformation to take place?

We live through many embodiments, from incarnation to incarnation. In each one we learn things of many kinds; each one is full of opportunities for gathering new experiences. It is impossible to carry over everything in every detail from incarnation to incarnation. When man is born again, it is not necessary for everything that he has once learnt to come to life in every detail. But if someone has learnt a lot in one incarnation, dies and is born again, although there is no need for all his ideas to revive, but he will return to life with the fruits of his former life, with the fruits of what he has learned. His emotions and feelings correspond to the realisations of his earlier incarnations.

In this poem of Goethe's we have a wonderful phenomenon: we encounter a man who, in the simplest words—as a child might speak, not in particularly intellectual or abstract terms—shows us the highest wisdom as a fruit of former knowledge. He has transformed this knowledge into feeling and experience and is thereby qualified to lead others who have perhaps learnt more in the form of concepts. Such a pilgrim with a mature soul that has transformed much of the knowledge it has gathered in earlier incarnations into direct feelings and emotions, such a pilgrim we have before us in Brother Mark. As a member of a secret Brotherhood he is sent out on an important mission to another secret Brotherhood.

He wanders through many different districts, and when he is getting tired, he comes to a mountain. At last, he journeys up the path to the summit. Every feature in this poem has a deep significance. When he has climbed the mountain, he sees in a nearby valley a monastery. This monastery is the abode of the brotherhood to which he has been sent. Over the gate of the monastery, he sees something special. He sees the Cross, but in unusual guise; the cross is entwined with roses! And at this point he utters a significant word that only he can understand who knows how very often that passcode has been spoken in secret brotherhoods, “Who added to the Cross the wreath of Roses?” And from the middle of the cross, he sees three rays radiating out as if from the Sun. There is no need for him to place before his soul conceptually the meaning of this profound symbol. The feeling and emotion of it already live in his soul, in his mature soul, that knows its inner meaning.

What is the meaning of the Cross? He knows that the Cross is a symbol for many things; among many others, for the threefold lower nature of man—the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body. In him the “I”—the Self—is born. In the Rose-Cross we have the fourfold man: in the Cross the physical man, the etheric man, and the astral man, and in the roses the Self. Why roses for the Self?—The esoteric Christianity added roses to the Cross because it saw in the Christ principle a summons to raise the Self from the state in which it is born in the three bodies, to an ever higher and higher self. In the Christ Principle he saw the power to carry this Self up higher and higher.

The Cross is the symbol of death in a quite particular sense. This, too, Goethe expresses in another beautiful passage³ when he says,

And until thou truly hast
This dying and becoming,
Thou art but a troubled guest
O'er the dark earth roaming.

“Dying and becoming”—overcome what you have first been given in the three lower bodies—deaden it, but not out of a desire for death, but to purify what is in these three bodies so as to attain in your Self the power to receive an ever-greater perfection. By deadening, what is given to you in the three lower bodies, the power of perfection will enter into the Self. In the Christ Principle, the Christian is to take the power of perfection into his Self, right into the blood. This power must work right into the blood.

Blood is the expression of the Self. In the red roses the esoteric Christian saw the power of the Christ Principle purifying and cleansing the blood, thus purifying the Self and so guiding man upwards to his higher being—he saw the power that transforms the astral body into the Spirit Self, the etheric body into the Life Spirit, the physical body into the Spirit Man. Thus, we encounter in the Rose-Cross connected with the triple beam a profound symbol of the Christ Principle. The pilgrim, Brother Mark, who arrives here, knows that he is at a place where the profoundest meaning of Christianity is understood.

Full weary by a long and tiring journey,
With a sublimest motive underta'en,
A pilgrim, brother Mark, came through the thicket,
With staff in hand, his footsteps to sustain,
And longing for a little food and drinking,
One beauteous eve he reached a quiet plain.
Its wooded gorges soothing hope bestowed
Beneath a friendly roof to find abode.

But lo! a path he scarcely can distinguish,
High up a mountain steep before him wending.
He follows it, as more and more it rises,
In curvings in and out the boulders bending,
Until again by sunlight warm enveloped,
He turns and sees how fast he is ascending.
At last the summit comes within his sight,
Inspiring him with heart-felt, deep delight.

Next it the sun, majestic in its setting,
Enthroned 'mong clouds within the dark'ning sky.
Now for the peak! For all his weary toiling
He hopes to be rewarded there on high.
O'erlooking all the country 'fore him spreading,
A human home he will perchance espy.
And while he climbs, oh sound how full of cheer!
The chime of bells is wafted to his ear.

And as at length he has attained the summit,
Below a softly sloping valley lies.
His quiet look with inward pleasure brightens;
Before the forest full of joy he spies
A stately building in a greening field,
Which the departing sun with lustre dyes.
E'er long he nears through meadows dewy damp
A monastery lit with gleaming lamp.

He soon arrives outside the quiet homestead,
With hope and peacefulness his soul enfolding,
And on the arch above the closed portal
A symbol full of mystery beholding.
He stands and ponders, whispers words of prayer,
The deep devotion of his heart unfolding;
He ponders long: What does this sign convey?
The sun has set, the chiming dies away.

The sign he sees erected here on high
That brings consoling hope to all mankind,
Which many thousands pledged their lives to shield,
To which in fervour prayed the human mind,
That has destroyed the bitter powers of death,
On victors' banners fluttered in the wind:
A stream of comfort permeates his being,
He sees the cross and bows his head in seeing.

He feels anew the faith of all on earth,
The power of salvation streaming thence;
But as he looks, he feels his very soul
Pervaded by a new and unknown sense:
Who added to the cross the wreath of roses?
It is entwined by blooming, clusters dense,
Profusely spreading just as though they could
Endow with softness e'en the rigid wood.

While light and silv'ry clouds, around it soaring,
Seem heavenward with cross and roses flowing,
And from the midst like living waters streaming
A threefold ray from out one core is glowing;
But not a word surrounds the holy token,
The meaning of the symbol clearly showing.
And while the dusk is gath'ring grey and greyer,
He stands and ponders and is lost in prayer.

The spirit of deepest Christianity which pervades this dwelling is expressed in the Cross entwined by roses. As the pilgrim enters, he is actually received in this spirit. As he enters, he becomes aware that in this house not this or that religion holds sway—but that here rules the higher Oneness of the religions of the world. Within the house he tells an older member of the Brotherhood who lives there, at whose behest and on what mission he has come. He is made welcome and hears that in this house lives in perfect seclusion a Brotherhood of twelve Brothers. These twelve Brothers are representatives of diverse human groups from all over the Earth; every one of the Brothers is the representative of a religious faith. None is to be found here, who is accepted while still young in years and immature. One will only be accepted when one has explored the world, when one has struggled with the joys and sorrows of the world, when one has worked and been active in the world and has wrestled with oneself upwards to gain a free survey beyond one’s narrowly confined domain. Only then is one placed and accepted into the circle of the Twelve. And these Twelve, of whom each one represents one of the world religions, live here in peace and harmony together. For they are led by a thirteenth who surpasses them all in the perfection of his human Self, who surpasses them all in his wide survey of human circumstances.

And how does Goethe indicate that this thirteenth is the representative of true Esotericism, the carrier of the Rosicrucian confession? Goethe indicates this by one of the brothers saying, “He was among us. Now we are in deepest sorrow because he is about to leave us, he wishes to part from us. But he finds it is right to part from us now. He desires to rise to higher regions, where he no longer needs to reveal himself in an earthly body.”

He may now ascend, for he has risen to the point that Goethe describes as follows: In every confession there is the possibility to come closer to the highest unity. When each of the twelve religions is matured to establish harmony, the Thirteenth, who has before brought about this harmony externally, can rise up. And we are beautifully told how we can achieve this perfection of the Self. First, the life-story of the Thirteenth is related. But the Brother who has admitted Mark knows many more details, which the great Leader of the twelve could not share. Several features of profound esoteric significance are now told by this brother to the pilgrim Mark. He learns, that when the Thirteenth was born a star appeared to herald his life on earth. Here there is a direct link to the star that guided the Three Holy Kings, and its meaning. This star has an enduring significance: it shows the way to self-knowledge, self-surrender, and self-perfection. It is the star which opens the understanding for the gifts which the Danish king received from the vision in his dream. The star which appears at the birth of anyone mature enough to absorb the Christ Principle into oneself.

And other things became apparent. It became clear that he had developed to that height of religious harmony which brings peace and harmony of the soul. Profoundly symbolical in this sense is the vulture which swoops down at the birth of the Thirteenth, but instead of working destruction it spreads peace around it among the doves.

We are told still more. While his little sister is lying in the cradle a viper winds itself around her. The Thirteenth, still a child, kills the viper. Hereby is wonderfully indicated how a mature soul—for only a mature soul can achieve such a thing after many incarnations—kills the viper already in early childhood: that means he overcame the lower astral nature. The viper is the symbol for the lower astral nature. The sister is his own etheric body, around which the astral body winds itself. He kills the viper for his sister.

Then we are told how he submitted obediently to what at first the family demanded of him. He obeyed his harsh father. The soul transforms its realisations, ideas, and thoughts. Then healing-powers develop in the soul that can bring healing into the world. Miraculous powers develop; they find expression by him using his sword to strike a spring out of the rock. Intentionally, we are here shown how his soul follows the path of the Scripture.

Thus gradually there matures the superior, the representative of humanity, the Chosen one, who works as the Thirteenth here in the society of the Twelve, the great secret Brotherhood which, under the sign of the Rose-Cross, has taken upon itself the mission for all mankind to harmonise the religions scattered throughout the world. This is how we are made acquainted, in a profound manner, with the soul-nature of the one who has so far led the Brotherhood of the Twelve.

At last he knocks. The myriad stars above him
Look down with shining eyes as they appear.
The portal opens, and he is bidden welcome
By brethren wont to comfort and to cheer.
So he relates how far by hill and valley
The will of higher Beings led him here.
They stand amazed, for well they see their guest
Was sent to them by heavenly behest.

They crowd around him, and their inmost being
They feel by a mysterious power stirred,
Their breath they hold to listen, for he rouses
An echo in their hearts with ev'ry word.
Like deepest lore, yet uttered by a child,
The wisdom flowing from his lips is heard:
He seems so innocent, like crystal clear,
As though descended from another sphere.

At last an aged brother cries: Oh welcome,
If with consoling hope thy path is blessed!
Thou seest us, our souls are moved within us
By thee, and yet we can but stand oppressed:
Our greatest bliss from us is being taken,
Anxiety and dread disturb our rest.
Thou comest as a stranger, yet to share
Portentous hours of mourning and of care:

For he, alas! who all of us united,
to whom as father and as friend we bow,
who light and fortitude within us kindled—
Our leader—is prepared to leave us now.
Yea, he himself his passing has predicted,
refusing though to tell us when and how:
The mystery of what must needs befall
Brings bitter tribulation to us all.

Thou seest us grey and aged ev’ry one,
By nature destined for repose and rest:
Not one was here admitted who, a youth,
Desired to fly from wordly joy and zest.
Each one has met with life's vicissitudes,
Its burdens, pleasures and its anxious quest,
Until, matured, too old to longer roam,
Within these walls we found a shelt'ring home.

The noble man who led us to this haven,
Within his heart the peace of God does dwell;
Along the path of life we walked together,
His ev'ry action I remember well;
But now his fervent praying, his seclusion,
The hour of his departing must foretell.
How small is man! Oh would that he could give
His life, so that a greater one might live!

This is my heart's profound and only wish!
Fulfilment is denied to my desire.
How many have preceded me in death!
How bitter is the thought he must expire.
Had he been here, with hearty welcome's warmth
He would have given all thou didst require;
But now in spirit-regions dwells his mind,
Already far from those he leaves behind.

Each day one hour he lingers in our midst
And speaks to us, by strange emotion stirred:
The wondrous paths that Providence has led
Within his life he lauds with ev'ry word;
We hark and heed, for after-ages hoarding
With care the merest trifle that occurred,
While one writes down his words to make us sure
His memory shall live both true and pure.

I hear him speak, but oh, how much there is
That I would rather myself relate,
For all is still alive within my mind,
The least of circumstances I would state;
Impatiently I list, can scarce conceal
How sore it is thus silently to wait:
One day I shall no more restrain my zeal,
The splendours of this beauteous life reveal.

I should disclose how first an angel's voice
His coming to his mother prophesied,
And how, when he was christened, in the sky
A star with brilliant lustre was descried,
How down a vulture swooped with mighty wings
To settle by the gentle pigeons' side,
But not to pounce on them in greedy wildness,
A harbinger he seemed of peace and mildness.

How as a child a viper he destroyed,
This is a miracle he ne'er has told.
He found his sister peacefully asleep,
The clinging reptile round her arm was rolled.
The nurse had fled and left the babe alone,
He killed the pois'nous snake, resolved and bold;
His mother came and saw the daring deed
And thrilled with joy she found her daughter freed.

He ne'er related that a spring arose
From out the barren rock before his sword,
And as a brook, with rippling waves alive,
Its plenteous waters down the hill-side poured;
E'en now, as quick as forth it gushed at first,
It bickers silver sparkling o'er the sward.
But those who saw the wondrous stream appear,
Dared not to drink, o'ercome by solemn fear.

For when a man excels by gifts of nature,
It is no wonder if his life is blessed;
In him we worship the Creator's power,
Through feeble human clay made manifest;
But he who overcomes himself has gained
The greatest triumph, stood the hardest test,
And well may he to all the world be shown:
Yea, this is he, this deed is his alone!

With all our strength we strive to live and labour,
Where'er by fate our twisting paths be wended;
Whereas the world oppresses, e'er impeding,
And seeks to tear us from the way intended;
Within this inner storm and outer struggle
Our spirit hears a word scarce comprehended:
The power that holds constrained all humankind
The victor o'er himself it no more can bind.

This man who had overcome himself, that is, who had overcome that “I” which at first is allotted to man, has become the Superior of the chosen Brotherhood. And thus, he leads the Twelve. He has led them to a point at which they are mature enough for him to be allowed to leave them.

Our Brother Mark is then conducted further to the rooms where the Twelve work. How did they work? Their activity is of an unusual kind, and we are told that it is an activity in the spiritual world. A man whose eyes observe only the physical plane, whose senses only see the physical and only that what is done by people in the physical world, cannot easily imagine that there is still other work. Work which under circumstances may even be far more vital and important than what is done externally on the physical plane. Work from the higher planes is far more important for mankind. Naturally, whoever wishes to work on the higher planes can only do so on condition that he has first completed his tasks on the physical plane. These Twelve had done so. For this reason, their combined activity is of high importance as a service to mankind.

Our Brother Mark is led into the hall where the Twelve were accustomed to assemble. There he encounters in deep symbolic guise the nature of their combined activity. The individual contribution of each of the Brothers to this combined activity is expressed by a special symbol above the seat of each one of the Twelve. Symbols of many kinds are to be seen there, expressing meaningfully and in very different ways the contribution of each to the common task. This task consists in spiritual activity, so that these streams flow together here into a current of spiritual life that floods the world and invigorates the rest of mankind. There are such brotherhoods, such centres from where such streams emanate and impact on the rest of mankind.

Above the seat of the Thirteenth, Brother Mark again sees the sign: the Cross entwined with roses. This sign is at the same time a symbol for the four-fold nature of man, and in the red roses the symbol for the purified Blood- or Self-principle, the principle of the higher man. Then we see that which is to be overcome by this sign of the Rose-Cross installed as a special symbol to the right and left of the seat of the Thirteenth. On the right Mark sees the fiery-coloured dragon, representing the astral nature of man.

It was well known in Christian Esotericism that man's soul can surrender to the three lower bodies. If it succumbs to them, then it is dominated by the lower life of the threefold bodily nature. This is expressed in astral perception through the dragon. This is no mere symbol but a very real sign. The dragon expresses what first must be conquered. In the passions, in those forces of astral fire—which are part of man's physical nature—in this dragon, Christian Esotericism saw what mankind has received from the torrid zone, from the South. Christian Esotericism that has spread through Europe has inspired this poem. From the South stems what mankind acquired as fierce passions, tending chiefly towards the lower senses. The first impulse to fight and overcome was foreseen in the influences streaming from the cooler North. The influence of the cooler North, the descent of the I into the threefold physical nature of man, is expressed according to the old symbol taken from the Constellation of the Bear. It shows a hand thrust into the jaws of a bear. The lower physical nature expressed by the fiery dragon will be overcome. What has been preserved in the higher rank of animal life was represented by the bear. The I which has developed beyond the dragon nature was represented with profound appropriateness by the thrusting of a human hand into the bear's jaws. On both sides of the Rose-Cross there appears what must be overcome by it. It is the Rose-Cross which calls upon man to purify and raise himself up higher and higher.

Thus the poem describes to us in fact the principle of esoteric Christianity in the profoundest manner and, above all, illustrates us what we ought to keep before our soul, particularly at a festival such as we are celebrating today.

The eldest of the Brothers living here, belonging to the Brotherhood, tells the pilgrim Mark expressly that their combined activity is of the spirit, that it is spiritual life. This work for mankind on the spiritual plane means something special. The Brothers have experienced life's joys and sorrows, they have passed through conflicts outside; they have accomplished tasks in the world outside. Now they are here, but here also work is done continuously to further the development of mankind. The pilgrim Marcus is told, “You have seen as much now as can be shown to a novice to whom the first portal is opened. You have been shown in profound symbols what man's ascent should be. But the second portal hides greater mysteries—how from the higher worlds work is done on mankind. You can only learn these greater mysteries after lengthy preparation, only then can you enter through the other gate.” Profound secrets are expressed in this poem.

In him I scarce as virtue may denote
The power of good which e'en his youth inspired
And taught him to respect his father's word,
When harshly he his services required,
With duties burdening his leisure hours;
The son obeyed with ardour, never tired,
Like some poor boy who, friendless and astray,
Is glad to work for but a trifling pay.

On foot he joined the warriors in the field,
In lowering tempest and in dazzling light,
The horses he did tend, the meals prepare,
And armed the soldiers ready for the fight.
Oft as a messenger, both keen and fleet,
He hastened through the woods by day and night;
To live for others both in thought and action
Seemed but to give him joy and satisfaction.

And brave and cheerful always, in the strife
He sought the arrows scattered on the ground;
Then hastily he gathered curing herbs,
With which the burning wounds he cooled and bound;
And just as if his very touch were healing,
Ere long the sufferers were strong and sound;
How all regarded him with joy and pride!
Alone his father seemed not satisfied.

E'en as a ship, despite its heavy load
From port to port with speedy lightness sailing,
He bore the burden of his parents' word
That in obedience ne'er he should be failing;
As pleasure is for boys, for youths distinction,
For him his father's will was all-prevailing,
So that he might demand whate'er he would,
Each task was soon fulfilled, each test was stood.

At last the father yielded and acknowledged
The merit of his son in word and deed;
While of a sudden all his sternness vanished,
He gave the youth a swift and precious steed;
Henceforth a sword replaced the shorter dagger,
And from his lesser duties he was freed:
Thus, destined by his birth and well acquitted,
Into an Order he was now admitted.

Ah, well could I report for many days
Amazing things to every one who hears;
And higher than the most delightful tales
His life will be esteemed in coming years;
For what in poetry and fiction charms,
Yet to our mind incredible appears,
Will here with greater pleasure still be heard,
Because it has in real event occurred.

The name of him whom Providence has chosen
That wondrous things on earth he should achieve,
Whom I may often praise, though ne'er sufficing
Whose destiny we scarcely can believe,
His name—it is Humanus, Saint and wise one,
The best of men whom I did e'er perceive:
By origin another name he bears,
Which with illustrious ancestors he shares.

The aged brother would have spoken on.
Filled with the miracles that he did know,
And he shall gladden us for many weeks
With all the stirring facts he still can show;
But he was interrupted, just as now
His heart was pouring forth in fervent flow.
The others softly in and out had passed
And deemed it time to intervene at last.

When Mark had bowed before his hosts and prayed
In gratitude for the sustaining meal,
A bowl of crystal water he requested.
They brought what he had craved with friendly zeal.
Hereafter led him to their festive hall,
Therein a sight unwonted to reveal.
Of what he saw you soon will be aware,
For everything shall be described with care.

No ornament was here, the eye deluding,
A cross-arched vault rose sternly from the ground,
And thirteen chairs against the walls, he noticed.
Were like a pious chorus ranged around,
By clever hands full delicately carven;
In front of each a little desk he found.
Devotion seemed to fill the very air,
Fraternity and restfulness and prayer.

Above each chair was hung a special shield,
Thirteen in all the number he espied.
They seemed to be important, purposeful,
No boast of ancestors in shallow pride.
And brother Mark, with longing all aglow,
Desired to learn what secret they did hide:
Lo, in the middle one the mystic sign,
The cross which clustring roses do entwine.

Each object will arouse to life and action
The soul which to its inspiration yields;
Some places are adorned by swords and lances,
While helmets hang above these other shields;
Here battered weapons are to be discovered,
Such as one may collect on battle-fields:
There spears and banners, come from distant lands,
And even fetters here and iron bands!

Each brother sinking down before his chair,
In silent prayer profoundly wrapt they rested;
Then softly chanted fervent hymns of thanks,
By cheerfulness and piety suggested;
With mutual blessing they retired to sleep,
A short repose, by fancies unmolested:
But Mark remains, surrounded by a few,
Still wishing more attentively to view.

Though tired in body, full awake his mind,
Preoccupied by many hidden things:
For here, his thirst in raging flames appeasing,
A dragon is enthroned with fiery wings;
And here between his jaws a bear is holding
An arm from which the blood it loses springs,
Both shields, in distance corresponding quite,
Hung next the Rosy-Cross to left and right.

Wherever he now turns and gazes in amazement,⁴
The more he marvels at the art and splendours
Abundant wealth seems wasted here on purpose
Has everything just made itself?—he wonders.
Should he have doubts about the work’s fulfilment?
Who so conceived the plan? ― he ponders.
It seems to him, with heavenly delight,
He’s only just beginning to live each moment right.

The paths were wonderful that led thee here,
The aged brother speaks unto his guest:
Oh let these symbols bid thee stay until
The many heroes' deeds we manifest;
Our mysteries we will confide to thee,
For what is here concealed, can ne'er be guessed;
Although thou wilt divine what here was done,
Endured and lost, and last what triumph won.

Do not believe that but of times gone by
The brother spake. Here wonders never fail;
And more and ever more thou shalt behold,
Until withdrawn is the enshrouding veil.
One portal only 'tis that thou hast passed:
And if thou feelst the call, O friend, prevail!
The foremost court as yet thou didst attain,
But worthy art the very core to gain.

After a short sleep our Brother Mark learns to divine something at least of the inner mysteries. In powerful symbols he has let the ascent of the human Self work upon his soul. When by a sign he is awakened from his short rest he comes to a portal that he finds locked. He hears a strange threefold harmony sounding thrice, and the whole as if intermingled with the playing of a flute. He cannot look in, cannot see what is happening there in the room.

We do not need to be told more than these few words to indicate in a profound way what awaits the man who approaches the spiritual worlds. When he is so far purified and perfected by his endeavours to develop his Self that he passed through the astral world and then approaches the higher worlds. In those worlds are to be found the spiritual archetypes of the things here on earth. When he approaches what is called in esoteric Christianity the world of heaven, he approaches it first through a world of flowing colour. Then he enters into a world of sound, into the harmony of the universe, the music of the spheres. The spiritual world is a world of sound. He who has developed his higher Self to the level of the higher worlds must become at home in this spiritual world. It is indeed Goethe who clearly expressed the higher experience of a world of spiritual sounds in his Faust, when he lets him be enraptured by heaven and the world of heaven reveals itself to him through sound.⁵

“The sun-orb sings, in emulation
'Mid brother-spheres, his ancient round...”

The physical Sun does not sing, but the spiritual Sun sings. Goethe retains this image when, after long wanderings, Faust is transported up into the spiritual worlds:

“Sounding loud to spirit-hearing,⁶
see the new-born day appearing.”
“Pealing rays and trumpet-blazes
—eye is blinded, ear amazes:
The Unheard can no one hear!”

Through the symbolic colour world of the astral, man evolving higher approaches the world of the harmony of the spheres, the Devachanic domain, the spiritual music. Only softly, softly, does Brother Mark hear ― after passing through the first portal, the astral portal, the chiming sound of the inner world behind our external world. That inner world which transforms the lower astral world into that higher world is traversed by the harmonious triad. And by reaching the higher world a human being’s lower nature is transformed into the higher Trinity: our astral body is changed into the Spirit Self, the etheric body into the Life Spirit, the physical body into the Spirit Man.

Brother Marcus has a premonition at first when in the music of the spheres he senses the triad of the higher nature. In becoming one with this music of the spheres he has the first presentiment of the rejuvenation of man who enters into union with the spiritual world. He sees, as in a dream, rejuvenated mankind in the form of the three youths bearing three torches floating through the garden. This is the moment when Mark's soul woke up in the morning from darkness, and where some darkness still remains as the light has not yet penetrated it. But precisely at such a time the soul can look into the spiritual world. It can look into the spiritual worlds just as it can look into them when the summer noon has passed, when the Sun is gradually losing in power and winter has come, and then at midnight the Christ Principle shines through the Earth in the Holy Night.

Through the Christ Principle, man is exalted to the higher Trinity, illustrated for Brother Mark by the three youths who are representing the rejuvenated mankind. This is the meaning of Goethe's lines:

“And until thou truly hast
This dying and becoming,
Thou art but a troubled guest
O'er the dark earth roaming.”

Every year anew, Christmas must remind those who understand esoteric Christianity that what happens in the external world is mimicry, are the gestures of inner spiritual processes. The external power of the Sun runs free in the spring and summer sunshine. In the Holy Scripture this external power of the Sun, which is only the proclamation of the inner spiritual power of the Sun, is represented by John the Baptist, but the inner, spiritual power by Christ. And while the physical power of the Sun continuously abates, the spiritual power rises and grows more and more in strength until it reaches its zenith at Christmas time. This is the meaning underlying the words in the gospel of St. John, “I must decrease, but He must increase”.⁷ And He increases and increases until He appears where the sun-force has again attained the outer physical power.

So that man may henceforth be able to revere and worship in this external physical power the spiritual power of the Sun, he must learn the meaning of the Christmas festival. For those who do not learn to know this meaning, the new power of the Sun is nothing but the old physical power returning. But one who has familiarised himself with the impulses which esoteric Christianity and especially the Christmas festival should give him, will see in the growing power of the solar body the external body of the inner Christ which shines through the Earth, which gives it life and fruitfulness, so that the Earth itself becomes the bearer of the Christ-power, of the Earth-Spirit. Thus, what is born in every Christmas night will be born anew for us each time. Through Christ we shall perceive inwardly the microcosm in the macrocosm, and this perception will lead us higher and higher.

The festivals, which have long ago become something external to man, will again appear in their deep significance for man, if he is led by this profound esotericism to the knowledge that the occurrences of external nature―such as thunder and lightning, sunrise and sunset, moonrise and the setting of the moon―are the gestures and physiognomy of spiritual existence. And at the significant points of the times marked by our festivals, man should realise that these are also times of important happenings in the spiritual world. Thus he shall be led to the rejuvenating spiritual power represented by the three youths, which the Self can only win by devoting itself to the outer world, and not by egotistically shutting itself away from it. But devotion to the outer world does not exist if that outer world is not permeated by the Spirit. That this Spirit should appear anew each year as a light in the darkness for all human beings, even for the weakest, must be written afresh each year into the hearts and souls of mankind.

This is what Goethe wished to express in this poem, The Mysteries. It is at once a Christmas poem and an Easter poem. It aims to hint at profound secrets of esoteric Christianity. If we let what he wished to indicate of the deep mysteries of Rosicrucian Christianity work upon us, if we absorb its power even in part then for some few at least in our environment we shall become missionaries. We shall succeed in fashioning these festivals once more into something filled with spirit and with life.

When after short repose within his cell
A deep resounding bell awakes our guest,
His soul is filled with longing for devotion,
He rises quickly with unwearied zest
And hastens to the church, with all his heart
Responding to the gladly heard behest,
Obedient, peaceful and by prayer bestirred;
Alas! The door is locked, he stands deterred.

But hark! a blow on dull resounding ore
Three times in equal intervals renewed,
No chime it seems to be of clock or bells,
From time to time with tones of flute imbued;
The floating music fills the heart with joy,
Mysterious 'tis and scarce to be construed,
It sounds like singing, solemn and entrancing,
To which the couples interlace in dancing.

Bewildered and by strange emotion moved,
He hastens to the window there to gaze;
The day is dawning in the distant east,
The sky o'erflown by lucent streaks of haze.
And may he trust his eyes? A mystic light
Is fleeting through the garden's winding ways;
Three youths with torches in their hands he sees
Who haste along the paths between the trees.

He clearly sees their wonderful apparel,
The white resplendent garments which they wear,
Their girdles made of intertwining roses,
The wreaths of flowers in their curly hair;
They seem to come from some nocturnal dances,
With joy of movement thrilled, enlived and fair.
But as the stars will fade, when day is near,
Extinguishing their torch, they disappear.

• 1. A correction after the transcript by Walter Vegelahn. In the first Edition this sentence was due to a different transcript recorded in error as “then the Earth was no longer the hull”.
• 2. Goethe himself wrote an essay about this fragment in the year 1816, “The Mysteries, a fragment by Goethe”, in Essays on Literature, Contributions to the Morning paper for the educated classes, 1807-1816. Sophien Edition, Volume 41/1.
• 3. “And until thou truly hast” is the final verse of the poem by Goethe “Blessed Longings”, of the collection West Eastern Divan.
• 4. The verse “Wherever he now turns and gazes in amazement”, is missing from most Goethe Editions, but according to an original handwritten Goethe script it had been intended for The Mysteries. Refer Goethe’s works, Weimar Edition, Volume 16, Page 436.
• 5. “The Sun-orb sings, in emulation...”, Goethe, Faust Part I, Prologue in Heaven, Verse 243 et seq.
• 6. “Sounding loud to spirit-hearing..”, Faust Part II, Act 1, Ariel Scene, Verse 4666 et seq.
• 7. “I must decrease, but he must increase”. The literal translation would be “I must sink, but he has to rise”. John-3-30.

Anthroposophy, when properly understood, will guide us back more and more into that immediate life from which a materialistic way of thinking, quite paradoxically, estranges us.

We have said this frequently, here and at other places, at many different occasions, and always in order to characterize the mission of our anthroposophical movement. The above statement will make a strange impression on many of our contemporaries, for they are of the opinion that true life, or what they call life, is to be sought elsewhere than in what anthroposophy has to give; and they are also of the opinion that anthroposophy is least qualified to show them how to lead a practical everyday existence. Such is not the case. Anthroposophy will help us in all ways, great and small! Its teaching, when thoroughly assimilated, will enable those who are engaged in public or other matters to solve the problems of the day in the way in which they should be solved if mankind is to lead a complete life. The many disorders and unhealthy conditions of our age which are now being approached, from one standpoint or another, in a more or less amateurish manner, could, if our contemporaries were to permeate themselves with anthroposophical truths, be successfully handled. I just wanted to touch on this issue, it will not be the focus of our contemplation today.

Today it will be more the emotional aspect of anthroposophy with which I ask you to occupy your thoughts. It will be noticed how to a deeper, feeling permeated comprehension of life, a time like the present must seem to be abstruse, uninteresting, matter-of-fact and theoretical. When Christmas, Easter or Whitsuntide approaches, we can see how certain outward forms and external ceremonies are adhered to But there is very little left of what our forefathers felt to be alive in their very souls—that deep current of feeling penetrating into the soul which was peculiar to our forefathers with regard to the relationship of mankind to the whole cosmos and its divine foundations. This feeling was particularly alive at the time of such festivals. Then it was something tangible for the soul, for then it received impressions different from those gained during the rest of the year.

No true conception is formed today of that which filled the souls of our ancestors when the days grew shorter, the end of the year approached and the birthday of Christ Jesus was about to be celebrated; or when, at the festival of the resurrection of Christ Jesus, the snow was slowly melting, and what the earth had hidden appeared once more on the surface. It would seem indeed that our life were concrete. In reality the feelings of our contemporaries have become abstract, matter-of-fact and empty. People pass through the streets, and hardly feel more about Christmas than that it is a time for giving and receiving presents. Should they have any other feeling, there is little connection between it and that deep feeling which absorbed our forefathers at that time of the year. Mankind has lost its true relationship with life. To show how to regain this relationship is one aspect of the mission of anthroposophical spiritual science.

One who only grasps with his mind and understanding what is usually called the anthroposophical conception of the world has understood only the very least part of anthroposophy. It is only understood by him who realizes that the whole of man’s feelings and emotions must be altered when anthroposophy lives itself into the heart and soul. What was abstract for a certain time, and even forgotten in its significance—the true meaning of our festivals—will again penetrate into our souls when the intimate connection of the whole surrounding world with man is realized again, as it may be through a spiritual perception.

The deeper meaning of the Christmas festival has often engaged our attention at this time. Today, we shall look at it from another aspect. This can only be done if at first we make quite clear to ourselves what impression anthroposophical thoughts and ideas produce on our feelings, how they really have the power of making out of a human being something quite different from what he is at present, something through which he will again know what it is to have an immediate experience of the pulsation of the spiritual life of nature—actually to feel the warmth which passed through creation, animating every being. When a man looks today at the starry sky with the help of the abstruse science of astronomy, he sees it inhabited by abstruse material worlds. But these celestial bodies will again appear to him as the bodies of souls and spirits; space will once more appear to him permeated by spirit and soul. He will experience the whole cosmos as filled with warmth, and have the feeling that he has when reclining on the bosom of a friend; though of course experiencing the spirit of the cosmos is much more majestic and sublime.

We know that we have to seek in man alone such a soul as we are cognizant of in man—an individual soul, which, so to say, lives in a single body. The soul of the other creatures which surround us, we must seek in another way and in a different form. The animals which live in our midst also have souls, but we shall look in vain for them here on the physical plane. The animal-ego, which we name a “group ego”, is to be found on the astral plane; and a whole group of related animals, for example the lion-group, the tiger-group, the cat-group, all separate groups of related forms, have each of them a common soul, a common ego. The separation by space here on earth makes no difference; every lion belongs to the same lion-ego, whether one lion is here in a zoo, and another in Africa. The spiritual scientist can find the animal ego on the astral plane; and there these group-egos are individual personalities, just as your personality here on the physical plane is individual. As your ten fingers belong to your individual personality, so does every lion belong to the group-ego of the lions. If we could become acquainted with the individual group-egos on the astral plane, we would find that wisdom is their most conspicuous characteristic, although to us here on earth separate animals may not appear very wise. Nobody ought to judge the characteristics of the group-ego, of animal individuality on the astral plane, on the basis of the characteristics of the separate animals here on earth. Just as little as your ten fingers show the characteristics of an individual ego, just so little does the single animal show the characteristics of the group-ego.

These group-egos act very sagaciously, and are wiser than you imagine; for what you know here as the achievements of animals are brought about by these group-egos. They live in the atmosphere surrounding our earth, they are to be found round about us. If you follow the flight of birds as they migrate at the approach of autumn from the north-east to the south-west, and at the approach of spring return once more from the south-west to the north-east, you might ask yourself: who guides their flight so wisely? In your search for the individual directors and rulers you will come, as a student of spiritual science, to the group-egos of the different genera or species. The astral ego, which is just as much an ego on the astral plane as the human ego is here, lives in every animal community. The group souls or personalities or astral egos, who have their individual members here on the physical plane, are much wiser than the egos of mankind on the physical plane; everything which is so wisely organized in the animal-world is the manifested wisdom of the group-egos of animals. We walk differently through the world if we know that at every pace forward, we step through beings whose deeds we are able to see.

Now let us look at the plant kingdom: the egos of this plant world are to be found in a still higher world than the one in which the group-egos of the animals live. The egos of plants (there are actually very few of them) are to be found in the spirit-world or Devachan; each one of the plant-egos embraces many, very many, of the individual plants which are found here on earth in such great variety. If we should seek the place where these plant-egos are to be found in space, we would come to the center of the earth. All plant-egos are united at the center of the earth.

It would reflect a rather primitive mental life if, when considering the spirit of the egos, you were to ask: Is there room enough for all these different egos? In the spirit everything in-terpenetrates. He who does not understand this comes to the point of view expressed just now in a book which is particularly recommended to theosophists. This book certainly speaks of spiritual worlds, but speaks about them by using arguments such as: If in the course of a thousand years thirty billion people had lived whose souls are now in the atmospheric surroundings of the earth, then there would be such a great number of souls, that there would scarcely be room for them all in the earth’s periphery.—This book is well intentioned, but it is extremely trivial. (“Unknown Powers,” by C. Flammarion.)

We have to seek the plant-egos in the center of the earth, because the earth itself as a planet is a complete organism. In the same relation in which the hairs of your head art to your organism, so are the plants to the organism of our earth. These plants are not independent beings but are members of the earth organism.

Feelings of pleasure and pain in plants are the pleasure and pain of the earth’s organism; we need only recall what you were told a few weeks ago about pleasure and pain in the plant-kingdom. He who is able to observe these things knows that if you injure a plant in the part above the earth, the injury is not connected with a feeling of pain in our earth organism. On the contrary, it gives a pleasant feeling to the earth, in the same way in which the cow suckling her calf gets and bestows a pleasurable sensation. Thus the green of the plant which springs out of the earth, even though fixed, may be compared with the milk of the animal organism. And when in autumn the reaper cuts the grain with his scythe, it is more than an abstract occurrence to one who understands how to transform anthroposophical ideas into feelings of the soul. The reaping calls forth a breath of joy which goes over the whole field, and the mowing of the grass fills the field with pleasurable sensations.

Thus we learn to feel with the earth organism as we feel on the bosom of a friend. We feel pain with the earth when we understand that as soon as we tear out the plants by their roots, the earth feels pain. It ought not to be objected here that under certain conditions it might be better to transplant a whole plant with roots rather than to pick its blossoms. Such an objection is not relevant here. If a person begins to get grey hair, and in order to remain younger looking pulls out the first grey hairs, does the action hurt the less?

Thus we learn to feel with nature around us; more and more we learn to experience nature as permeated by soul and spirit. When we enter a quarry and watch the men breaking stones, this act remains with us as something concrete, not abstract, if we deepen our anthroposophical ideas on the subject into feelings of the soul. Then we do not only see the stones flying out of the rocks—not even if a rock were blasted would it seem abstract to us. On the contrary, we learn to feel what nature, permeated by soul and spirit, is feeling outside us. If we have a glass of water before us and throw into it some salt or a lump of sugar, and watch how the salt or sugar dissolves, this arouses the feeling that there is soul in it. If we would know what kind of a soul is contained therein we must not bring forward ordinary analogies. It would be very easy to believe that when the quarry-man breaks off the stone, his action causes nature to feel pain, but in reality the exact opposite is the case. What is called division into fragments in the mineral kingdom gives nature the greatest joy, an internal sensation of well-being. There is also an internal sensation of well-being when we dissolve a piece of sugar or salt in water. Feelings of pleasure flow through the water during the dissolving of the mineral bodies. It is different under different circumstances.

We can call to mind the primeval age on earth—that time when our earth was a fiery-fluid body with every mineral and metal dissolved in it. It was not possible for our earth to remain in such a state, it had to become the place on which we live, the solid body on which we can walk about. The metals and minerals had to solidify out of the liquid element; it was necessary for them to harden, to pull themselves together. Everything that was dissolved in the liquid element had to congeal and become crystallized. A similar process to what can be observed with salt dissolved in a glass of water: let the water evaporate and you will be able to see the salt crystals as firm particles. If you follow the feelings which are brought into action by such happenings you will see that pain can be felt even in the apparently dense mineral kingdom. Everything which appears to us as demolition and breaking into fragments gives a feeling of pleasure to the earth; whereas consolidation, compression, crystallization give a feeling of pain. The minerals and rocks of the planet on which we live have been formed under conditions of pain. And this has, more or less, been the case during the hardening of the earth’s crust.

If we look into the future development of our earth, we must imagine that what is firm and solid will become more and more flexible and liquid, until at last the earth changes into that which is called the “astral earth.” Thus the earth matter will have become rarer and rarer; so that we, in the first half of our earth’s evolution, must regard the elements of the mineral kingdom as that which, under the influence of pain and suffering, has formed the solid stage for our existence. Towards the end of the earth’s evolution there will be more peaceful feelings, the whole earth will be full of feelings of joy; it will change into a heavenly planet, which, in the cosmos, will be astral.

When the initiated talk about these things, deep mysteries lie hidden in their words. They express themselves in such a way that their words have several levels of meaning, because they contain so much. St. Paul, who was an initiate, spoke with words which always had several hidden meanings. The further we advance in the comprehension of the cosmos, of the spirit worlds, the better we shall understand these expressions of St. Paul and their hidden meaning. St. Paul knew that the earth suffered during the time it was becoming firm, and that it is longing for its release into a spiritual, heavenly state: “For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together, waiting for the adoption.” (Romans viii, 22) By these words the initiate Paul referred to the pain accompanying the formation of the hard minerals whereon we stand and move.

So long as we only consider Anthroposophy as a system of thought we do not understand it rightly. It is the characteristic mark of Anthroposophy, that ideas must change into feelings, and we become different beings when, at every step, we feel and are conscious of all that we see about us. Those who really understood the esoteric teaching of Christianity were also of this opinion. You can follow the Christian writers as far as the eighteenth century and discover many who had sympathy with all the pleasure and all the pain of living nature. In their writings they use words which are for mankind today but empty sounds, or at the most allegories or pictures, whereas to those who understand them they are truths: “You shall not alone think upon nature, but you shall perceive it and taste it and feel it!”

They meant that when the reaper cuts the grain, we should taste the feeling that passes over the field during this action.

When we see the man in the quarry breaking off the stone, we should enjoy with nature her sensation of well-being. When we notice a deposit of earth where a river flows into the sea, we should at the same time learn to feel the pain which accompanies the deposition of earth.

Thus we can begin to experience nature completely permeated by soul. Our souls will then gain the power of growing out of their confinement. Feeling streams into the world in which we live, and we become one with the whole of nature. When we become one with it, piece by piece, we will also feel the spirituality and soul-nature of the great yearly occurrences. In the spring, when the days gradually become longer and longer, and more light falls on the earth; when out of her womb the plants, whose seeds were in the earth, spring up, and when everything is once more clothed in green, then we feel that not only what we see—as the shimmering green- is coming forth, but we feel as well that something akin to soul activity is taking place.

When winter draws near, the days grow shorter, less light falls on our earth, the plants retire to their winter sleep, and the green changes, we too experience a similar feeling to that which we have at night when we fall asleep. On the other hand, the awakening of external nature in the spring draws from us its corresponding feeling, for these events are no allegory, but realities. We feel the changes in nature, and also the changes in the soul and spirit of nature. In the latter half of the summer we feel how everything seems to decline, how the soul of our earth approaches sleep.—Then in the evening, when we ourselves fee1 sleepy, we have a real example before us of the living process which we have often described. Gradually, the astral body with the ego withdraws from the physical and etheric body, frees itself, and floats as it were into its own, its very own original world. If a man could do today, in the present condition of the evolution of humanity, what he will be able to do in the future, a spiritual consciousness would light up when the astral body lifts itself out of the etheric and physical bodies; spiritual forces and a spirit world would surround the body; man would simply leave his physical body in order that he might enter into another form of existence. This, in fact, he does today too, but he knows nothing about it in his present stage of development.

The same thing also occurs to our earth. The astral body of our earth changes during the year. (The changes are not the same in the two opposite hemispheres, but this does not concern us today). The astral body of our earth is occupied with the external natural existence of our earth during the time in which plants and life generally spring up out of the earth. When plants grow, it is the astral body that looks after everything that grows and flourishes on the earth. In the autumn, when a kind of sleepiness comes over the earth, this astral body returns to its spiritual activity.

Those who are able to really feel this earth-process know that during the height of the sun—from spring right into autumn -in everything which grows and increases out of doors, they must see the outer revelation of the spirit of the earth. But when autumn approaches they are directly in contact with the liberated astral body of the earth; when the days are shortest, that is, when the outer physical life approaches nearest to sleep, then the spiritual life awakens. What is this “spiritual life” of the earth? Who is the “spirit of the earth?”

This “spirit of the earth” described Himself as such when He spoke these words: “He that eateth My bread, treadeth Me with feet”; and when He made reference to that which the earth brings forth as true nourishment for man and said, “This is My body!” and again when He was referring to that which flows as the sap of life and said, “This is My blood!” In these sayings He described the earth itself as His organism.

This was quite different in pre-Christian times—different from what it is in the Christian era at a definite moment of the earth’s evolution. During the short days when the sacred mysteries of the ancients were being observed, those who were initiated turned with their whole soul towards the sun; at midnight on the day which we know as Christmas Day, those about to be initiated into the sacred mysteries were advanced so far that they were able to see the sun at the midnight hour. They were then promoted to being clairvoyant. We today cannot see the sun at the midnight hour because it is then at the other side of the earth; but the physical earth presents no obstacle to the seer, he can see the sun. He sees it in its spiritual essence. When the seers saw the sun at the midnight hour in the holy mysteries they saw the sun’s sovereign ruler—the Christ. Those saw Him who were able to come into contact with Him, but at that time still in the sun.

The flowing of blood from His wounds on Golgotha was an event fraught with meaning for the whole of the earth’s evolution. Nobody understands that event who has not the power of understanding that Christianity is built upon a mystical fact. If someone with clairvoyant sight could have watched the development of the earth from a distant planet for some thousands of years, he would not only have seen the physical body, but the astral body of our earth as well. This astral body of the earth would have emanated definite lights, definite colors and definite forms during those thousands of years. In one moment this was changed.

Other forms appeared, other lights and colours shone forth -and this moment was when the blood flowed out of the wounds of our Saviour at Golgotha. This was not only a human, but a cosmic event. Through it the Christ-Ego, which up to this time could only be discovered in the sun, passed to the earth. It linked itself with the earth, and in the spirit of the earth we find the Christ-Ego, the sun ego. The initiate is henceforth able to see in Christ himself the sun-spirit which formerly, at the time of Christmas, was only to be seen at the midnight hour on the sun in the holy places of the ancients.

Christian consciousness, not only the consciousness of the ordinary Christian, but the consciousness of the Christian initiate, lies in the living feeling of union with the spirit of Christ. This takes place every year when the days are becoming shorter and the physical earth is beginning to fall asleep. It is then possible for us to come into direct connection with the spirit of the earth. Therefore, to place the birth of our Savior in the time of the shortest days and the longest nights was not the outcome of an arbitrary decision, but the result of initiation. Bound up with the shortening of the days and the lengthening of the nights, we see something infinitely spiritual, and we feel at the same time that in this event there is a living soul—the highest soul which we are able to feel in the earth’s evolution.

When the first Christians uttered the name of Christ, they did not express any doctrine or any particular mode of thought. It would have seemed quite impossible for them to call anyone a Christian who believed only the words which Christ Jesus spoke as a Christian teacher. It cannot be denied that these doctrines are also to be found in other religious beliefs, and no one wishes to regard them as something singular. Today, however, for the first time in history, par-ticularly in the educated classes, special stress is laid on the fact that the teaching of Christ Jesus is in harmony with other religious beliefs. It is quite true that it is difficult to find a single precept which had not already been taught before; but this has nothing to do with the matter. Not by doctrine alone is the Christian made one with Christ. He is not a Christian who believes in the doctrine, but he is a Christian who believes in the Christ-Spirit. In order to be a Christian we must have the feeling of union with Him, the feeling of union with the Christ who actually dwells on earth. Simply to avow the teaching of Christ is not preaching Christianity. To preach Christianity means to be able to see in Christ the Spirit Whom we have just characterized as the regent of the sun; Who in the moment when the blood flowed out of His wounds on Golgotha, transferred His work to the earth and through this act drew the earth into the work of the sun.

On this account those who were the first to preach Christianity laid very great stress on proclaiming the person of Christ Jesus, and very little stress on His words: “We have seen Him when He was with us on the holy mount.” They attached great value to the fact that He was there—that they saw Him. “We have placed our hands in His wounds.” They valued the fact that they had touched Him. What was felt at the time was that the whole of the future evolution of mankind on earth proceeds from this historical event. On this account the disciples said: “We value the fact that we were with Him on the holy mount; but we also think it a great thing that the words of the prophets have been fulfilled in Him—those words inspired by very truth and wisdom.” What the prophets foretold has been fulfilled. By “prophets” was then meant initiates, men who could predict the Christ, because they had seen Him at the midnight hour at Christmas time in the Holy Mysteries. The first disciples considered the event on Golgotha as a fulfillment of that which has always been known; and a rapid and total change took place in the feelings and thoughts of the initiated.

If we look into the time before the Christian era, and even let our thoughts wander further to a more remote time, we find that all love and affection is bound up with the tic of blood relationships. In the Jewish race, out of which Christ Himself issued, we see love only between those who are kinsfolk—we see that those love one another in whom the same blood flows; even earlier than this, love always rested on the natural foundation of a common blood-relationship. Spiritual love, which is independent of flesh and blood, was first introduced on earth by Christ. On this depends the fulfillment of the saying: “Who forsaketh not father and mother, brother and sister, wife and child, cannot be My disciple.” He who makes love conditional upon the natural foundation of blood-relationship, is not according to this sense a Christian. Spiritual love, which as a great fraternal bond will permeate all mankind, is the result of Christianity.

Christianity teaches mankind how to acquire the most perfect freedom and inner cohesiveness. The ‘Psalmist said, “I remember the days of old and ponder times long past”. To look back upon one’s first ancestors was a persistent experience of the olden times. The men of old could feel the blood of their ancestors flowing through their veins, and felt that their ego was connected with the ego of their ancestors. If it were desired to really feel this connection, even amongst the old Jewish people, it was customary to utter the name of Abraham; he who uttered this name felt that some of the blood which descended from Abraham flowed through his veins. When he wished to express his highest nature the Jew said: “I am one with Abraham!” After the death of his body, his soul returned into Abraham’s bosom—this has a deep, a very deep meaning. At that time man was not in possession of the self-dependence which first entered his consciousness through Christ Jesus. The conscious understanding of the “I am” was awakened by Christ Jesus. At that time they could not have felt the whole divinity of the inner divine being of man. They felt “I am,” but they connected it with their ancestors; they felt it in the common blood which flowed through their veins since the time of Abraham. Then Christ Jesus came and with Him the consciousness that there is something older and more independent in mankind. The “I am” is not only to be sought in what is common to a nation, but is something in the individual personality, which therefore must again seek love with its own personality, beyond itself. The ego which is today confined in you, cut off from everything outside itself, seeks spiritual love beyond itself.

This ego does not feel itself one with the father who was in Abraham, but with the spiritual Father of the world: “I and My Father are one!” A more profound saying than this—although this is the most impressive—because it appeals more to the understanding, is the one in which Christ made it clear to mankind that they are not expressing the utmost when they say, “I existed before in Abraham.” He points out that the “I am” is of older date, emanating from God Himself:

“Before Abraham was, I Am.” In this way does the saying appear in the original—which usually is so expressed that nobody quite understands what it means—“before Abraham was born, I am.” The “I am,” the innermost spiritual being, which everyone has within him, existed before Abraham.

One who understands this saying penetrates deeply into the essence of Christian intuition and life, and understands why Christ also refers to it in the words: “I am with you always, even unto the end of the world!” Therefore we also ought to feel the true hidden meaning of the expression in the Christmas hymn, which tells us every year anew at Christmas the original secret of the existence beyond time of the “I am.” The hymn is not sung as a reminder, “Today we remember that Christ was born”, rather we sing every time: “Christ is born in us today!” For this event is eternal, and that which once took place in Palestine can happen anew every Christmas night for those who have the power of transforming the teaching into feelings and experiences.

Anthroposophy will help mankind really to feel and understand again what is meant when we celebrate such a festival. Its mission is not to teach an abstract doctrine, an abstract theory, but to lead man back into fuller life—to make this life appear not as something abstract but as something which is filled with soul. We feel this soul when we go into the quarry and watch the stones being split off; when we see the migration of birds; when we see the scythe going through the grain; when the sun rises and sets. And the more profound the events we contemplate, the deeper do we feel their soul nature. At the great turning-points of the year we feel the most important soul events. What is most important for us is that we shall again learn to feel at those great turning-points of the year which are marked out in our festivals.

Thus our festivals will again become like a living breath permeating the soul of man; at the time of such festivals man will again become familiar with the whole weaving and working of the full soul and spirit nature. The anthroposophist must for the present act as a pioneer with regard to what these festivals may once more become when mankind understands their spirit anew—understands anew what is called “the festival spirit.” It will belong to those forces which will once more lead man out into the cosmos, when anthroposophists at such festivals feel and realize something of the feelings and sensations of nature, and remember at these important moments what Anthroposophy is able to restore to mankind through its teachings. Anthroposophy will then become a living factor in the soul, and will be genuine “life-wisdom”, vitaesophia. Anthroposophy can accomplish this best when the world-soul comes down amongst us, and is united with us in an especially intimate manner at the festival of the birth of Christ.

From the aspect of modern thinking it may perhaps sound strange that we are arranging a study course for the Christmas holidays (Christmas Course for Teachers, 23rd December to 7th of January), because people generally think that during the great festivals of the year work should stop and that Christmas in particular should only be dedicated to religious exercises. Nevertheless a deeper insight into present conditions should not conceal the fact that this Christmas above all calls for other things than those which held good for such a long time. We live in another age and today it must seem frivolous to maintain old customs and traditions, without considering the difficult, distressing times in which we live, and untouched by what is taking place particularly in the present day both in the visible and in the invisible world. We see people making presents to each other at Christmas, they adorn the tree and do other things out of tradition, things which people have been accustomed to do for many centuries. But today in particular we should bear in mind that to keep up such old traditions and customs in almost … a crime.

Those who had a deeper share in the events of the past years feel as if they had lived for centuries, and they can only look with a certain feeling of sorrow upon that part of mankind which is still led by habit and has the same thoughts today which were to some extent justified until the beginning or the middle of the second decade of our century. To an unprejudiced mind everything coming from the events of the time must appear full of problems which touch the very elements of the whole life of man.

We frequently hear the reproach that many people more and more believe that Christianity consists in their calling out “Lord, Lord,” or in uttering the name of Christ as often as possible. But something quite different is needed today: A Christianization of our whole life, in which it does not suffice to utter the name of Christ, but entails that we should deeply and intimately unite ourselves with the Spirit of Christ. We see that almost in the whole world great problems of life are being advanced today. And we can already perceive that the region, the European region which has for many centuries been the stage of human civilization cannot remain so in future. We perceive that the world problems now extend to larger territories and in the present time we perceive above all through symptomatic phenomena that the great conflict between the West and the East announced itself in every sphere of life.

The West kindled the flame of a young spiritual life based upon a mechanical-naturalistic foundation. This spiritual life is only viewed in the right way by those who hold that it is in the beginning of its development. But from this young spiritual life in the West we should look across to the East; we become more and more connected with it, also geographically and historically, and the West must reckon with the East.

In the East there exists an ancient life of the spirit, a spiritual life that can be traced back thousands of years. Immense respect can be felt for what lives in the East; although it is already decadent; the greatest reverence can be felt for it when looking back from its present state of decadence to the primeval wisdom of humanity from which it sprang.

When we envisage the more spiritual aspects of life a word re-echoes from the East which always awakens a peculiar echo in our hearts, particularly when we adopt the standpoint of the West. It is a word which is meant to express in the language of the East the characteristic of the physical world which we perceive round about us through our senses. The East, beginning with India, has been accustomed to designate this physical-sensory world as MAYA, the great illusion – apart from the fact of it being expressed more or less clearly.

The East (but, as stated, this exists only in a decadent form) thus faces the external world perceived through the eyes and ears as a great illusion that confronts man, as Maya.

Those who learn to know the characteristics of the life conceptions of the East, must experience that this conception of Maya was not originally contained in the primeval wisdom of the Orient. The spiritual science of Anthroposophy above all enables us to gain insight into a development of the Oriental civilization stretching over thousands of years. We then look back into a time which lies 3000 years before Christ, and by going back still further into a remote antiquity, we find this conception of Maya less and less, this idea of the great illusion connected with the physical-sensory reality of the external world.

If we wish to indicate an approximate epoch, we may say: Only at the turn of the 3rd and 4th millennium B.C. this concept rises up in the East; the conviction rises up that the physical-sensory world which surrounds man is not a reality, but a great illusion, a Maya.

What is the cause of this immense change in the life attitude of the East? The cause lies deeply rooted in the soul development of humanity. If we consider the primeval wisdom of the East, the poetical form which it assumed later on in the Vedas, the philosophical form of the Vedanta philosophy and the Yoga doctrine into which it developed, if we notice, for example, the greatness and loftiness in which this eastern teaching is contained in the Bhagavad Gita, we find that once upon a time the essence of this Eastern teaching was that man perceived not only the external sensory world, but that in this physical world, in everything he saw through his eyes, heard through his ears or touched with his hands, he perceived a divine-spiritual essence.

For these primeval men the trees did not exist as prosaically as they do for us: In every tree, in every bush, in every cloud, in every fountain there was something which announced itself as a soul-spiritual, cosmic content of the world. Wherever they looked, they saw the physical permeated by the spiritual. The fountain did not only murmur in inarticulate sounds, but the murmuring fountain conveyed a soul-spiritual content. The forest did not only rustle in an inarticulate way; the rustling forest spoke to them the language of the everlasting Cosmic Word, of a soul-spiritual Being. Modern people can only have a very pale idea of the immensely living way in which man experienced the world in this remote, primeval time.

But this alert, spiritual way in which man lived in his surroundings gradually became paralyzed towards the 3rd millennium B.C. And if we transfer ourselves into the development of the times, we perceive that humanity, now taken as a whole, as it were, as humanity of the Orient, began to perceive the phenomena of the world with a certain feeling of longing and of sorrow, as if the gods had withdrawn from them. This feeling was voiced by many more profound souls almost in the form of a prayer by saying: the old gods have vanished and are now behind the surface of the external physical objects. The world has grown empty, it has lost the gods, and because of this emptiness, because it is without the gods, it is Maya, the great illusion. They did not speak of the world as a great illusion from the very beginning; but because it no longer contained the gods, they experienced it as a great illusion, as Maya.

If we wish to go back to the truly living essence of this conception we should go back even behind the Atlantean catastrophe, as far as the Atlantean race. For immediately after the Atlantean catastrophe civilization in general shows a faint trace of looking upon the external physical phenomena of the world as something not real.

Yet until the end of the 4th millennium B.C. there still existed in a strong measure the capacity to perceive the gods in the physical world. This faculty existed in so strong a measure that until that time people needed no consolation for what had up to that time been considered as unreality in the world. But such a consolation was needed after 4000 B.C. It was sought in initiation by the teachers and priests of the Mysteries. It was sought in the language of the stars. Here on earth – people said – there is no reality. But if we investigate the stars, they tell us in their language that reality is poured down to the earth from world-distant heavenly regions. If we listen to the language spoken by the stars Maya seems to obtain a true meaning. The great impression made upon mankind by the star wisdom of the ancient Egyptians consisted in the fact that people felt in this star wisdom something which gave Maya a foundation of reality. People said that here on earth only unreal things are to be found. But one had to look up to the eternal Cosmic Word that speaks to receptive souls in the movements and positions of the stars. Reality will then manifest itself in Maya. If anyone wished to know something important and significant in life, it was investigated in the stars and in their language. This was the human soul constitution until the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha took place.

What was real was announced to humanity by the sages of the mysteries, for people did not think that this reality could be found on earth. Those who understand the true essence of life in ancient Greece will perceive that something tragic weighs on it (although a certain superficial way of looking at things makes people say that in Greece life consisted in a childlike joy over the nature of reality); the Greeks yearned for a kind of redemption in human life. This is nothing but the echo of that Oriental feeling, which I have described to you just now. We modern people have reached the point where thought develops, as it were, in modern civilization as highest inner treasure; thought unfolds on every side. But we have not reached the point of recognizing thought as a reality. When submitting to the life of thought we feel as if we lived in something not real. Indeed, many people say that thought life is nothing but an ideology. This word “ideology” indicates in regard to the inner life of the soul, the same thing which was experienced in the Orient in regard to the external physical-sensory reality, which was designated as Maya. In the same way in which we speak of ideology, we may speak of Maya, but we must apply this to our inner soul life.

The soul-spiritual which was such an intense reality in the Orient for a certain epoch, became Maya for the Occident, and the Maya of the Orient, the external, physical-sensory world, became our naturalistic reality. We live by calling that which permeates us inwardly, maturing to the stage of thought, an ideology, or Maya. The Orientals once perceived gods in the external physical world of nature. But these gods vanished from their sight. The Orientals did not have thought in the form in which we have it now. The characteristic of the Occident is that it gained the faculty of thought, the purest, most light-filled form of soul life. But the divine element in thought has not yet dawned for us. We are waiting for the divine essence in thought which must rise up for us. The Orientals lost the divine essence in the external physical world, so that it became a Maya, but this divine essence does not as yet exist in our world of ideas, in our thoughts, in our inner world filled with thought. In the course of historical development the Orientals little by little saw that the external physical world no longer contained the gods. And our thought life does not yet contain the divine; it is without God. We can only grasp this by looking upon it as a kind of prophecy that one day the Maya of our thoughts will be filled by an inner reality.

The history of human evolution is thus divided into two important parts. One part develops from a life filled with the divine essence to a life deprived of this divine essence, of the gods; the other part – and we are now living in the beginning of this development – unfolds from a life deprived of the divine towards the hoped-for life filled with the divine. And in the middle - in between these two streams of development, the Cross is set up on Golgotha. How does it stand within the consciousness of humanity?

From the time of the Mystery of Golgotha we look back six centuries and come to Buddha, who gradually became an object of veneration on the part of a large community. We see Buddha abandoning his home and going out into the world, and among the manifold things which he perceives he sees a corpse. The sight of this corpse stirs up his soul, so that he turns away from the Maya of the external world. The corpse has a discouraging, frightening effect on Buddha. And because he had to look upon death, the corpse, he felt that he had to turn his gaze away from the physical world to another sphere, to the divine-spiritual which cannot be found on earth. The sight of the lifeless body was the true reason why Buddha left the world and fled into a sphere of reality outside the physical world.

Let us now turn to a historical moment about 600 years after the Mystery of Golgotha. Many people look towards that great symbol: the cross with the corpse hanging upon it. They look upon the lifeless human being. Yet they do not look upon him in such a way as to flee from him and seek another reality, but in this lifeless human being they see something which is a real refuge to them. Mankind went through a great change in the course of twelve centuries: It learned to love death upon the cross, that death from which Buddha fled.

Nothing can indicate more deeply the great change which took place through the Mystery of Golgotha, which lies in the middle, in between these two historical moments. And by turning our thoughts to the Mystery of Golgotha we should remember what was really the object of reverence in accordance with early Christianity.

St. Paul, an initiate in the mysteries of his time, could not believe in the living Jesus; he opposed the living Jesus. But when he perceived the living Christ on his way to Damascus, the Christ that can even manifest Himself out of the world's darkness, then Paul believed in the risen Christ, not in the living Jesus, and he began to love the living Jesus because he was the bearer of the risen Christ. Out of this special insight into the connections of the world St. Paul gained certainty in regard to the divine-spiritual life, and this certainty sprang out of death.

What had taken place in the development of humanity was that people once found comfort when they looked up from the earth to the stars, whence the everlasting Word resounded, whereas later on they turned their gaze to the historical event upon Golgotha; they beheld a human sheath that contained the mystery of life.

The apostle St. John expressed this Mystery of Life in the words: “In the beginning was the Word.” Yes, in the beginning the Word spoke out of the path and position of the stars! This Word resounded from the cosmos. This Word could no longer be found upon the earth, but it came down to the earth from heavenly spaces, from the Home of the Father. The writer of the Gospel of St. John ventured to pronounce the words: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” That is to say, what once lived outside in the stars took up its abode in the body which hung upon the cross. What was formerly sought outside in the cosmic spaces became visible in a human being. What formerly streamed down to the earth in the shining light, came down to man! The whole way of looking upon life was inspired by a world-wide cosmology which led to a conception of the central human being filled by that which came down to man! The whole way of looking upon life was inspired by a world-wide cosmology which led to a conception of the central human being filled by that which once shone down from the stars and was permeated by the living Cosmic Word.

The sense, the deeper meaning which is to be revealed by the Mystery of Golgotha is that it is also possible to look towards the origin of the world by looking into Jesus' inner being and by establishing an intimate connection between one's own inner being and the inner human being of Jesus, even as in the past a connection was established between the human being living on earth and the everlasting Cosmic Word speaking out of the stars. The Mystery of Golgotha is indeed the most important and incisive influence in the evolution of the earth and this is indicated in the New Testament.

It is immensely stirring and profound how the Gospels – now it is related by this one, now by the other – speak of the coming of Christ Jesus. On the one hand there are the three sages, the Magi from the Orient, the bearers of an ancient starry lore, who investigated the Cosmic Word in the star writing of the cosmos. They were endowed with the highest wisdom then accessible to man. And the Gospels indicate that the highest wisdom could at that time only state that Christ Jesus had appeared, for the stars had revealed it. It is the eternal Cosmic Word that lives in the stars which revealed to man that Christ Jesus would appear. The schools of wisdom proclaimed: Since the beginning of the present earthly existence of mankind, Jupiter completed his planetary orbit 354 times. A Jupiter year, a great Jupiter year, reached its close since the time which the ancient Hebrews, for example, fixed for the beginning of man's existence on earth. In accordance with the world conception of that time, an ordinary year only had 354 days. 354 Jupiter days elapsed, and these 354 Jupiter days are like a sentence speaking out of the cosmic wisdom, a sublime sentence, in which the single words indicate the revolutions of Mercury. There is a Mercury day 7 x 7 = 49 times, and this in the same length of time of a Jupiter day.

These were the connections sought by the ancient sages in the writing of the stars. And the inspirations which their souls received by deciphering the starry writing was interpreted in such a way that they were able to say: Christ Jesus is coming, for the times are fulfilled. The Jupiter time, the Mercury time are both fulfilled. This is what the Gospels relate on the one side. On the other side they tell of the revelation which was given to the poor shepherds on the field; without any wisdom, from the dream streaming out of their simple hearts, merely by listening to the simple, pious voice of the human soul, a revelation came to these poor shepherds out of the depths of the human heart. And it is the same message: Christ is coming. Highest wisdom and greatest soul simplicity unite in the words: Christ is coming. At that time the highest wisdom was already decadent, it was setting. Instead, there rises up something which comes from man's own inner being. Ever since, thought has risen out of man's inner being. We cannot yet raise it to the stage of reality; it is still a Maya, but it is necessary in an ever-growing measure to bear in mind that thought can become a reality. In pre-Christian times man looked up to the stars in order to experience reality. We must look towards Christ in order to have reality in regard to our inner being. Not I, Christ in me – this is the Word which will confer weight and inner reality to thought.

The theologians of the 19th Century gradually changed Christ Jesus into a merely human character which can also be recognized with the aid of history, ordinary history; Jesus, the simple, though highly developed man of Nazareth. The Christ has been lost. He will appear in His true shape when a world conception based on the super-sensible will rise up again, a life conception that turns from the physical-sensory to the super-sensible. In the same measure in which mankind has lost the spiritual from the physical, it must gain inner reality in the life of thought, which has to be sure advanced to the stage of being filled with light, but in an abstract way.

This inner reality will be gained by perceiving on the earth itself, in the things taking place in connection with the Mystery of Golgotha, something which the human soul can only face through super-sensible conceptions. Christ will be born anew in the development of human civilization in the same measure in which we decide to gain an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, with the aid of super-sensible knowledge. By absorbing super-sensible knowledge man may hope for a perennial Bethlehem. A profound meaning lies in the words of Angelus Silesius: “Though Christ be born a thousand times in Bethlehem, but not in you, then you are lost for evermore.”

Christ must be born not only in empty words, but in every form of wisdom and knowledge. We must reach the point of envisaging what may be gained by looking at the world, as Paul did before he approached the event of Damascus, before he perceived that the earth is permeated by the forces of the living Christ. These forces of the living Christ should be brought into every form of knowledge. The cold abstract knowledge which led us into the misery of the present time must be filled with warmth. This is an important and significant task of the present times. We should feel that first of all we must reach Christ. A profound intimate deepening of the Christ idea must be gained. We should realize that the present misery is too great for the maintenance of old Christmas customs. We must rise to the conviction that it is a farce to keep them up in the face of the other conceptions which prevail in the present time. The great conflict between East and West must also take place in the spiritual sphere and the harmonization of the Maya of the East with the Maya of the West – the Maya of the external world and the Maya of thought. These must reach a harmonious agreement.

Let us not think that in the present time we already have Christ. We should feel like the poor shepherds who were conscious of their misery. Christ should be sought in the innermost depths of man's being, even as the shepherds sought him in the stable of Bethlehem. Sacrifices should be offered to Christ, who transforms the Maya of our thoughts into realities. We should be humble enough to realize that we must first rise to an understanding of Christ's birth. We should remember that we first have to gain an understanding of the Christmas idea before we are really able to appreciate Christmas in the right way. Every sphere of life should be permeated with the living forces of Christ. We must work. And the festivals will be celebrated best of all if in the present misery we strive to transform into a spiritual reality the symbol – but it is a symbol of reality – which faces us historically from Golgotha's place of skulls.

Let us grasp that the most significant thought which we can have at Christmas is the following: A real understanding of Christianity must bring about a Cosmic Christmas. This inner voice, this inner longing, can lead us over into a Christmas which is in keeping with the misery of the present time. For the consecrated holy nights, the Christmas festival at the end of the year, can only acquire life if we are filled with the longing to see in Christmas an inducement to gain insight into the needs of human development. The festive feeling which we have at Christmas will then ray out something of the truth that tells us that through the power of an inner understanding of that reality which is still a Maya for us, we can come to the resurrection of that divine-spiritual reality which came to an end in more remote ages and led to the conception of Maya. Mankind reached Maya, the external Maya. The true soul-spiritual reality must unfold out of the inner Maya. If we understand this, then the individual Christmas idea which we have during this festive season will be permeated by a true cosmic feeling, and this is needed today, if we are to experience the true value and dignity of man. The feelings which we have in connection with the different festivals of the year will then ray out something which will induce us to say: In these times of misery and distress, Christmas should be celebrated in such a way that we can see the NEW CHRISTMAS LIGHTS OF A NEW SPIRITUAL LIFE. We must learn to celebrate not only an individual Christmas, but a COSMIC, UNIVERSAL CHRISTMAS.