The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The four plays here produced in an English translation in two volumes, are perhaps best described as Christian Mystery Plays. They are intended to represent the experiences of the soul during initiation; or in other words, the psychic development of man up to the moment when he is able to pierce the veil and see into the beyond. Through this vision he is then able to discover his real self and carry into effect the cryptic injunction graven on the old Greek temples Γνωθι σεαυτόν, know thyself. At a later stage he comes to ‘realize’ himself, and finally learns the true significance of the Second Advent of our Lord. This process is known as the ‘Rosicrucian’ initiation—an initiation specially adapted to modern days—the time and manner of which depend on the individual nature and circumstances of each person.

The four plays form one continuous series, and the characters portrayed are of quite an ordinary kind except that they take more than the usual interest in spiritual matters, their first desire being so to improve their own mental and moral state as to make then able to benefit their fellows.

We find amongst them many types—the occult leader and the seeress who explains the coming of Christ. We are shown the spiritual development of an artist, a scientist, a philosopher, a historian, a mystic, and a man of the world; and we hear too the scoffing cynicism of the materialist Fox. We are led to realize how the characters are connected on the physical as well as the spiritual plane; and we learn also about the nature of elementals and the twin forces of hindrance known as Lucifer and Ahriman; the former of whom may be described as an embodiment of the spiritual impulse to action, an impulse always necessary but often distorted to bring about self-glorification rather than the ambition to do good; the latter as an embodiment of an influence which seeks to materialize everything, thus hindering true spiritual growth and freedom. These two influences are given to man that he may gain free will by having perfect liberty to guide them in the one direction or in the other.

With regard to the writing and production of the plays, Doctor Steiner's habit is to write a play whilst the rehearsals are actually in progress, finishing it a few days before the first public performance, and the first play was written and acted in this manner in August, 1910, the second in August, 1911, the third in August, 1912, and the fourth in August, 1913. It was not until then that the complete key to the development of the characters was attainable. The last play explains the progress of the other three, and, following out the hint given in the second play by the account of the previous incarnation in the Middle Ages, traces the characters right back to their earlier incarnation in ancient Egypt.

The plays were performed in Munich every summer under the personal direction of the author and were acted by men and women of several nationalities—all students of his teaching. The audiences numbered some two thousand and were composed entirely of his followers.

In 1913, owing to the difficulties and expense incurred each year in securing an appropriate theatre, his supporters acquired a plot of ground in Munich, and plans were designed for a theatre of their own, but the Munich authorities after much prevarication and delay finally prohibited its building.

Because of this, and because of the hostility which his writings and lectures had aroused in other parts of Germany, Doctor Steiner was led to set up his theatre in Switzerland at the little village of Dornach—not far from Bâle. Here a theatre is being built in accordance with his own designs and it is hoped that the plays will be performed there regularly as soon as the edifice is complete.

In conclusion I should like to express my gratitude to my friends and fellow students R. T. Gladstone, M.A., Cantab, and S. M, K. Gandell, M.A., Oxon, for their most valuable help in the very difficult task of translating the plays into English verse. Only a translator can appreciate the difficulties involved in preserving both the sense and rhythm of the original, and it is no exaggeration to say that without their aid the production of these works in English would not have been possible at the present time.

I would also like to take this occasion of thanking Doctor Steiner himself for permitting me to attend the rehearsals and assist in the performances of the plays. It was a great privilege and pleasure for which I can never feel sufficiently grateful. And last, but not least, I have to thank him for his ever kind and patient attention to all my questions on the subject of these plays and of spiritual science in general.

H. COLLISON.

New York, 1919.

The lecture today has been preceded by the representation of the Easter scene in Faust (the lecture was preceded by the Eurhythmic representation), that scene in which the Earth-Spirit appears to Faust. A week ago we were considering some features in Faust which are of the gravest importance for those who desire to draw nearer to the laws and life of the universe, in the light of Spiritual Science. My reason for taking this poetical creation of Goethe’s as the subject of my lectures (both on Easter Sunday and today) is not merely to give an explanation of Goethe’s Faust. It is because, while studying the series of artistic representations which pass before us in Faust, our minds are able to follow the evolution of the Faust-soul in the spiritual world, and can, so to speak, share in its experiences on the spiritual plane. The nature of our reflections upon this poetical creation will depend upon the extent to which we are able to view Faust from the standpoint of Spiritual Science.

As a matter of fact, Faust is the expression of Goethe’s own endeavour to penetrate into the spiritual world. But it is also an expression of that important turning-point in the history of modern times, when the great mind of Goethe strove to enter that same world into which we are striving to enter today by means of our Spiritual Science.

We were able to show in the last lecture that Goethe lived at a time in which it really was not yet possible to find the true path leading into the spiritual world, in a clear, consistent way. We were able to show that such truths as the true meaning of Lucifer and Ahriman only floated before Goethe’s mind as indistinct conceptions; a confused perception, as it were, of the spiritual world. And we were able to prove that both Lucifer and Ahriman were welded together in Mephistopheles. Also that in Mephistopheles Goethe had only a nebulous image before him, a figure which he could not clearly visualise in a spiritually-scientific manner. From this endeavour of Goethe’s, expressed as it is in Faust, we can realise with what earnestness, with what intense conscientiousness, with what a sense of responsibility, we should follow up every clue presented to us by Spiritual Science.

When a master-mind such as this meets with such tremendous difficulties in its endeavour to reach that goal towards which so many are striving today, we can certainly learn a great deal by the study of Goethe’s quest and Goethe’s warfare.

I wish that all students of the phenomena of Spiritual Science, even those who are only beginners, would study this document, and go through Goethe’s Faust over and over again. It is a document of the early dawn of Spiritual Science, before the Sun rose upon the first endeavours of that Science.

In my last lecture I showed how the riper knowledge of Goethe’s maturity was required to rescue his soul from the critical situation into which it had wandered in his youth. Goethe’s soul could not be satisfied with what could be conceived of the Universe by the brain and intellect alone. And what swirled and raged in his soul, in his endeavour to reach that fundamental spiritual basis of life, he put into the form of the striving Faust; who, however, is not a portrait of Goethe himself, though he represents, in an artistic setting, certain features in Goethe’s own struggle and certain sides of Goethe’s life. The scene with the appearance of the Earth-Spirit belongs to the earliest part of Faust. It is one of the scenes which Goethe wrote first of all.

In my last lecture I spoke of Faust in such a way that, should I be misunderstood (as I so often am), people might go away and say that I had described Faust as being incomplete as a work of art; that I had, in fact, criticised Faust very severely. And anybody who was particularly ingenious might say that I was a turn-coat in my views on Goethe; that at one time I was a great admirer of Goethe, but that I had now proved myself to be one of his detractors. Well, my dear friends, it should not be necessary for me to explain that I do not honour Goethe one whit less than ever I did, nor that he is still to me the greatest mind of modern times. But, however much a great personality may command our respect, this fact should never make us blind worshippers of his authority. We must always preserve a clear perception of what we ourselves believe to be the truth.

Faust has been put together—one might say patched together—at different times. And one might say that when Goethe wrote the earliest parts of Faust in 1770, he was really not capable of writing the later parts. It was necessary that before doing so he should arrive at maturity, that he should progress from an ardent desire to reach the spiritual worlds, to what we must term his ‘comprehension of Christianity.’ Goethe required all the mature experience of his riper years, so to manipulate his artistic conception, that Faust, the investigator of the spiritual world, is brought to a comprehension of the Easter Mystery, and receives back his life through the remembrance of it. This Faust actually takes up the Gospels and begins to translate the Gospel of St. John. We hear many people today say that they do not require Spiritual Science to resuscitate for them the inner truths of Christianity; that this Spiritual Science is quite unnecessary, because Christianity can always be understood by the truths proclaimed by every priest from his pulpit, and that faith alone, faith in Christianity, is of any avail... Well, compare such an attitude with the attitude of Goethe. Goethe, one of the very greatest minds, took years before he was sufficiently mature to understand the truths of Christianity. Now we can form an idea of the monstrous conceit, the terrible darkness in which mankind is imprisoned. Especially those, who babbling confusedly and conceitedly of the simplicity of their minds, waive aside that which they do not require—the substance of Spiritual Science—for which, according to their own ideas, they have no use.

In the scene of the Earth-Spirit we see how Goethe was occupied during his youth, in his thirties and during the last twenty years of his life. We gather from this Earth-Spirit scene and from the Faust monologue which precedes it, that Goethe had steeped himself in so-called occult-mystical literature. We see how he endeavoured by means of the knowledge gained from this literature, by meditation, by meditative exercises, to discover the spiritual world.

In the scene which we have witnessed today, we see Faust absorbed in meditation, by means of which he hopes to soar to the spiritual worlds. He discovered this meditation in an ancient occult mystical book, by one Nostradamus. In this book the author maintains that by use of this meditation a man can attain to a knowledge of the spiritual worlds. Let us endeavour to picture to ourselves the world into which Faust—and therefore Goethe also—desired to penetrate. Now when the human soul has been enabled to strengthen its inner power to such an extent that the soul and spirit are liberated from the human shell, free, that is, from the instrument of the physical body; when the soul has, to a certain extent, escaped from the physical body with all the powers of which the body is barely conscious during its usual, everyday life—then, when this occurs, a spiritual thread reaches out from the physical body: or, rather, not so much from the physical body enclosed in its limited physical form as from the physical life within it, with which man is still spiritually connected by means of this thread or ray going back from him to the physical life. In the life between death and rebirth a ray or stream of this spiritual life runs back through time and connects with our earthly experiences. There are descriptions of this in other lectures.

How will this physical existence affect the human soul, when it has escaped from the conditions of the instrument of the physical body? For the man who has escaped from the conditions of physical existence, his whole physical experience becomes, so to speak, an organ of the soul. All his physical experiences become, as it were, eyes and ears. The whole individual will become a sense-organ, a spiritual sense-organ—an organ, so to speak, of the whole earth, which looks out into cosmic space. In order that our eyes may perceive physical objects, we must be outside them; the eyes must be imbedded as a kind of independent organism enclosed in the socket which encircles it with its walls of bone. In the same way the ear must be shut off also. Again the whole physical apparatus of the brain is enclosed in the skull and shut off from the rest of the human body. The physical experiences of man must also be shut off, so that they become receptacles, sense-instruments, so to speak; so that the whole physical life of man becomes, in a sense, either an eye or an ear, by means of which the man who is outside his physical experiences can gaze out into the whole universe.

Now what is now experienced may be described as follows:—A man is suddenly plunged into the world described in my book Theosophy as the Soul World. This is the world into which man first enters when he passes through the experience of living with his now independent soul outside the body, and sees his own physical life as exterior to himself. In my course of lectures (Vienna, April, 1914) I described how man, even during his life between death. and a new birth, is in possession of a spiritual sense-organ which he derives from his previous earthly life and by means of which he is able to perceive the rest of the universe. That is to say, by having lived an earthly life, he is able to perceive the rest of the universe. We are able to find our friends in that world for a long time after death, until they move on to another world, which can even by Initiates only be reached by a later evolutionary condition of the soul. In this world into which we move on, many things will present themselves to the observer. It is only possible to relate isolated experiences about this world; and these must be collected from the various lectures which characterise this supersensible world. Above all, what strikes the soul most when it is freed from the body and passes on to a new world is that the stars seem to fade away. The soul now experiences an elemental world. It now moves with the currents of air, it is one with the warmth which suffuses the earth, it streams out with the rays of light. When the soul streams out with the light, it is no longer able to perceive exterior objects by means of that light. Therefore it seems to this soul that the sun and stars are extinguished and that the Moon with its fight has disappeared. The soul no longer leads an external existence, it has become part of the elemental world. And at the same time it becomes part of that life which is termed the root-force of historical events—the historical becoming. In this world it becomes possible to see what history brings to the life of mankind. By means of a further meditative evolution the soul can rise to a still higher experience. In this state not only will its own existence be a spiritual and psychic sense-organ, but the whole Earth becomes its sense-organ. Paradoxically, it may be said—only you must not misunderstand me—that now the human soul must pass on to an experience in which it becomes fused with that essence which contains the whole world within it. As before, during our earthly life, our eyes were set in our body, and as then we were accustomed to see with our eyes and hear with our ears, so now, by means of the whole Earth and its existence, we are able to view the entire universe. We then become aware, that all the teaching of the Natural Scientists about the Sun and stars is nothing but a materialistic dream. In the world previous to this state, the stars were already extinguished, and the Sun and the Moon had already disappeared. Now, however, we become aware that where we supposed the Sun to be, there is really a community of spirits. That wherever we thought we saw stars, there are, in reality, spiritual worlds.

And as we look back upon our earthly existence we become aware that the teaching of the Natural Scientists is only a fantastic, materialistic dream. For what appeared to us as the stars or the Sun, is really in the spiritual world the seat of a spiritual community, in the same way as the Earth is the seat of a human community. But just as from a distant star it would not be possible to see any physical bodies, only the souls of men, just as little can one say that anything can interest us up there in the sphere of the stars which is not of a spiritual or soul nature. But what we do see may be described as the vapour of the earth atmosphere, which collides with what it meets. The physical eye cannot perceive what the star really is, it only sees the vapour which the Earth itself sheds out into the cosmic space. All that appears to us as the starry heavens is nothing but what is woven by the Earth itself out of its own substance, though that, certainly, is etheric substance. It is a curtain which the Earth draws before the reality beyond. When, however, the soul extends its life into this world, it learns that these imaginary material stars of which the Natural Scientists speak do not exist; that these stars are living beings, communities of living beings, which move to and fro soaring backwards and forwards in cosmic space, handing down gifts from the upper spheres to the lower, and again passing up gifts above from below.

Into the Whole how all things weave,
One in another work and live!
What heavenly forces up and down are ranging,
The golden buckets interchanging...

Forces, but now in the sense in which we speak of the primal forces,

With wafted benison winging,
From heaven through the Earth are springing,
All through the All harmonious ringing!

When this is read in its spiritual meaning, we have approximately that world into which the soul’s life now extends.

Now, my dear friends, let us try and ascertain how far Faust, at the time in which he is represented to us, had shared in the experiences which I have just been describing. He had opened an old book, written by one who had described an ancient perception by means of symbols, and had given the sign of the macrocosm. But Faust is naturally not in a position to transport himself with his soul into those spheres, where the wisdoms unfold their great occurrences in the universe. Faust is not in a position to soar so high. He only sees the symbol inscribed by one who had visited these regions—the symbol of the macrocosm. But a dream, a dim presentiment is aroused, that this symbol means something. Just suppose you had never heard anything about Spiritual Science and that the symbol lay before you, arousing a feeling that once someone had seen something that you also wanted to see. There you have the situation of Faust’s soul. Next imagine that something in these symbols which are really the signs of the Zodiac, the signs of the elements, the signs of the planets, stirs some chord in your imagination so deeply, that involuntarily the words, ‘A glorious pageant,’ fall from your lips. This, however, brings you back to earth, for now you perceive that the symbols in the book are mere imagination. Alas! ‘A pageant merely.’

So, after all, it is only an imaginary pageant, and you are brought down to earth. The symbol has not led you any further. On the contrary, it has thrown you back, for it has aroused the feeling that it is indeed the spirit world that lies before you, but nowhere can you find an entrance.

Thou boundless Nature, where shall I grasp thee clearly?
Where you, ye breasts, founts of all life that fail not,
At which both Heaven and Earth are nursed?
For you the withered breast doth thirst.

What else is this but the feeling of incorporation? Incorporation with the elements, with light, with air, with the subordinate world I Faust had penetrated into the spiritual world, but has now fallen back into that world which I have already described, as the nearest supersensible world:—the world of light and air-existence. This is clearly indicated in the lines:

Ye well, ye slake, I faint, yet ye avail not.

Faust has sunk back into himself again. Back from the spiritual into the elemental world. But, as yet, he is not in a position to recognise even this. Then in search for help, he opens the book and there sees the symbol of the Earth-Spirit. This sign was also transcribed by one who had known this nether-world, the elemental world, as his own. Faust now feels himself there too. He has a sort of sensation of having entered it.

How otherwise upon me works this sign!

Why? Faust feels its influence, because he has turned aside from the light of the senses and experiences something of existence in this world.

It is of this he speaks when he says:

My powers I feel already higher.

That is, what is experienced when one lives in the Warmth and Light:

I glow, as if with new-made wine.

Imagine yourself experiencing the warmth in your soul, that you live and move in the world as part of the waves of heat:

Full-steeled to tread the world I feel my mettle.

One really seems to move in and to form part of the elements. As I said before, the earth-life becomes an organ of sense; just as formerly the eye and the ear perceived and heard in themselves, so now one feels the Earth to be the sense-organ of the soul.

To whirl round the world with the storm,¹

when the soul is one with the waves of the air.

Clouds gather overhead
The moon withdraws her light.

No wonder! I have already described how the stars and Moon are extinguished, and why. For Faust the light disappears, because he becomes part of the light itself.

Vapours arise! Red lightnings quiver
About my head!

This is now inward perception.

A shudder
Down-wafted from the vaulted gloom
Lays hold on me I
Spirit conjured, that hovering near me art,
Unveil thyself!
Ah! What a spasm racks my heart!
To novel emotions
All my senses are stirred with storm like the ocean’s.

Note how life in the elements is expressed here.

I feel thee draw my heart, with might unmeasured!
Thou must! Thou must! Though life stand on the hazard!

And now in the course of his meditation Faust pronounces the invocation ascribed to the sign of the Earth-Spirit. It is a meditative, suggestive mantram, and really leads to the sight of the Master of the spirits, into whose dominion we pass, when we enter the elemental world. But we note at once that Faust is not ready for this world—he feels, above all, that he is not prepared for this world. What is lacking? Self-knowledge! He must gain self-knowledge, which is truly the deepest knowledge of the world of which we form a part. The knowledge which must be gained if we would swim and move and travel and have our being in the elemental world. But of that which is individual in this world Faust has no cognisance.

This spirit-talk between Faust and the Earth-Spirit is very characteristic of the stage of maturity reached by Goethe at the time when he wrote this scene, which represents his own tremendous endeavours to penetrate the spiritual world.

Spirit: Who calls to me?

Faust shrinks back from the sound at once. Naturally, it is quite unlike anything that can be heard with the physical ears. It is not that the sound comes from a long way oS, but that the aspirant to spiritual heights must have become part of sound itself. So that sound there is something quite different from what it is heard upon this Earth. Totally different. It is the same with vision. Man no longer sees by means of the light, but having become incorporated with it he streams out with it. Everything appears quite different. Faust had desired to become a super-man. That is to say, he desired to enter the spiritual world. But now this spiritual world fills him with terror. By this meeting with the Earth-Spirit, Eaust realises that to gain entrance into the spiritual world he must become a very different being from what he was before, as man; that it is not possible to enter these worlds encumbered with the natural powers, sensations and passions. And, as he fell back the first time from the higher spiritual worlds into the elemental worlds, so now he falls back from the elemental world into his own perceptions, because he has still remained the same ego he was before. He had not developed a fitness for this elemental world into which the meditation ending in the incantation to the Earth-Spirit had introduced him. For one moment he had caught a glimpse of the beings who inhabit this world and of their nature. But the spirit says to him:—

Where art thou, Faust, whose clamour filled mine ear,
Thou, that didst press amain into my sphere?

I have already pointed out that this voice sounded from the sub-consciousness—that these words were spoken by that subconscious Faust whom the external Faust himself did not really know.

Say, is it thou, that by my breath surrounded,
In all Life’s utmost deeps confounded,

This ‘Thou’ stands for the ordinary Faust, while the striving, struggling Faust was the loftier individuality of Faust.

A timorous, writhing worm!

But the opposition in Faust is aroused. He determines to enter that world for which he is unfit.

Creature of Flame, thou shalt not daunt me!
'Tis I, 'tis Faust, thy peer I vaunt me!

Now he can hear how the spirits of the elemental world, into which he, Faust, has transferred himself, live in the history of mankind: how they live in what the races and civilisations accomplish on the earth: how they live in it all. And the secret of the Elemental World is spoken by the Earth-Spirit. He never speaks of ‘being,’ but only of ‘becoming,’ of the happenings.

Spirit: In floods of being, in actions storm,
Up and down I wave,
To and fro I flee,
Birth and the grave,
An infinite sea,
A changeful weaving,
An ardent living;
The ringing loom of Time is my care,
And I weave God’s living garment there.

Not in space or in time! (See the Hague lectures entitled “The Effect of Occult Development on the Bodies and Self of Man.”) This is the spirit that lives through history, so much Faust realises:—

Thou busy Spirit, that rangest unconfined
Round the wide world, how near I feel to thee.

Thou that rangest unconfined round the wide world! Thou who art the spirit belonging to the spirits of time! How near I feel to thee! So he says in his presumption. Then the spirit speaks through words of thunder as Faust describes them a little further on. Lake thunder indeed they strike upon his soul and dash him back to the ordinary earth in which he dwells, because he is not yet mature enough. Self-knowledge must be gained and then in the extended self become one with the universe, he must seek the spiritual world. As yet he cannot find it, hence the thunder tones of the Earth Spirit.

Thou'rt like the Spirit thou graspest with thy mind,
Thou’rt not like me!

Who then is this spirit whom Faust cannot understand? What spirit can Faust understand? He, made in the image of the Godhead, who cannot understand the Earth Spirit! How then can he proceed further in self-knowledge? What, then, is this human spirit like, whom Faust can understand?

(This Spirit here enters in dressing-gown and night-cap. The second Faust: Wagner!)

This, then, is the spirit whom thou canst comprehend! Wagner. Him thou canst understand! Thou hast attained no higher than this: for all else that lives in thee is nought but obstinacy and passion.

Faust has advanced a step upon the road to self-knowledge. This is what is so peculiar in Goethe’s Faust, and it demonstrates the fine artistic perception of the master. The whole dramatic setting is, in fact, an illustration of the steps to self-knowledge.

As Mephistopheles illustrated one stage of self-knowledge gained by Faust, so also does the figure of Wagner. Wagner is really Faust himself. It would be perfectly correct if on the stage Faust were to be represented in accordance with this idea, and if the figure of Wagner in night-attire, from whom Faust recoils, were to be made to resemble Faust; if Wagner, in fact, were represented as a duplicate of Faust. Then people would understand at once why Wagner enters at this moment; what Wagner expresses is in reality what Faust has already grasped. Everything else that he has said has merely been empty rhetoric.

Faust believed that he could arrive at the deepest spiritual truths by reciting empty phrases, the real meaning of which he has never experienced in his soul. Now he acquires a piece of self-knowledge. Wagner speaks truth. Faust has never expressed the true innermost experiences of his soul. He has only been ‘reciting,’ ‘spouting.’

‘Pardon—I heard your voice declaiming!’

‘Aye, marry, if your preacher be an actor,
As that from time to time well happen may.’

This scorn, this pride comes from the Luciferic influence in Faust. For if Faust were not so blinded by Lucifer, he would express the same sentiments as Wagner does, that is, if he could bring himself to confess what he is honestly capable of grasping with his understanding. The other is a faint foreshadowing of what Faust hopes to attain. But in this conversation with himself—for that is what it really is—Faust nevertheless makes a step forward. We do make a step forward in life, my dear friends, when we thus meet ourselves in others. We do not like to confess to ourselves that we possess certain characteristics, but when we see these in other people, we find it easier to study them. By this means, by the consideration of our own characteristics in the personality of another, we gain self-knowledge; even as Faust did in the personality of Wagner. Faust, however, had not yet advanced sufficiently to be able to say when Wagner had left him, ‘Yes! Truly that am I myself.’ If he had attained to complete mental illumination he would have said, ‘I am only a Wagner! Wagner is reflected in my brain!’

‘How is the head by hope not all forsaken,
That ever cleaves to stalest stuff, and when
With greedy hand he digs for treasures, then
Is overjoyed, if earth-worms he hath taken!’

For up to the present Faust has done nothing except seek for spirits, in the manner already described. In this encounter with Wagner, Faust acquires self-knowledge. Who was it that sent Wagner to Faust? It was the Earth- Spirit that sent him.

‘Thou’rt like the Spirit thou graspest with thy mind,
Thou’rt not like me!’

So now Faust is to see the spirit he resembles. He does not resemble the Earth-Spirit, the Lord of the World; but for once he shall see one of the figures which make up his personality. ‘There! Behold Wagner! This Wagner dwells in thee!’

But there is more in Faust than Wagner alone, there is also the Luciferic element, which strives against Wagner, viz., against Faust himself. Besides these there is yet another element.

If we look into the earliest edition of Faust, we find that the scenes immediately following that in which the Earth-Spirit appears, are missing. When the first edition appeared, the missing scenes were not written. Goethe was not ready to write them. The early edition ran thus: Conversation with Wagner, the students, Mephistopheles. Faust is sitting among his students and into this circle Mephistopheles enters. Goethe did not in reality know whether Mephistopheles was really Lucifer or Ahriman. If he had been acquainted with Spiritual Science he would have made Lucifer appear then.

In Mephistopheles we have the other spirit sent by the Earth-Spirit to Faust. The Earth-Spirit has already sent Wagner, now he sends Mephistopheles, or, as we should say, Lucifer. Little by little Faust must learn what is really within him. The Earth Spirit sends to him Mephistopheles. ‘Behold! Another of the spirits whom thou canst comprehend. Try to understand the Luciferic element within thyself, instead of presuming all at once the Earth Spirit!’

That Goethe was uncertain about the matter appears from four lines in the original manuscript, which were omitted in the later edition. They occur in the original manuscript of 1775, after the scene in which Mephistopheles has shown Gretchen to Faust, and in which Faust is burning to make her acquaintance. There they stand, these four lines in the original manuscript, but they were omitted from the Fragment published in 1790.

After Faust has commanded Mephistopheles, who is really Lucifer—for Goethe confuses the two—to procure the jewels, he departs. And Mephistopheles, left alone, says, in the old manuscript,

‘You’d think he were a Prince’s son!
Had Lucifer a dozen such,
It would remunerate him much.
In the end his commission’s always won.’²

There it stands. There Mephistopheles gives himself the name of Lucifer. As I said before, these lines were omitted in the later editions. And what was the task which Goethe set himself, when in his mature old age he endeavoured to give expression to his real self in his Faust? Has task was, to show how man might attain to self-knowledge. In this first scene, which Goethe wrote in his youth, we see foreshadowed what we can read so clearly now and which is described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and, its Attainment as the meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold. Here wo see how man discovers little by little the various elements of which he is composed and how they are distributed. This is shadowed forth in Faust. He discovers himself in Wagner and in Mephisto-Lucifer. By degrees he learns to know himself in his different parts, first as Wagner, then as Lucifer-Mephisto. But, as I said before, Goethe had to wait for maturity before he could fully understand, as far as it was possible for him to do so at the time in which he lived, the tremendous import of the Christ Impulse for humanity. Thus we see it was not till he was advanced in years that he endeavoured to finish the work he had begun as a young man. This early work described Faust’s struggles, up to the point when he meets himself face to face in the various reflections of himself which are presented to him, amongst which is the Luciferic reflection of himself. When Goethe had reached maturity he finished this work by bringing Faust into touch with the Impulse poured out by Christ into the aura of earthly evolution. The Christian symbols are then introduced. Therefore, in Faust we see a document, which relates how Goethe himself was brought to Christianity by occultism, that is to say, to the Christ-Impulse. And it shows that we too, today, are proceeding further along that selfsame road upon which Goethe, in his time, first struck out as a pioneer. In Goethe’s time it was only possible to attain to a foreshadowing of this. today, the time has come when it is possible for man by means of Spiritual Science to enter those spiritual regions, the goal towards which Goethe’s lifelong struggles were directed. today, Faust must be understood in a different way from that in which even Goethe himself understood it. Yes, the world progresses, my dear friends, and if we do not fully realise that fact, then we do not regard the world seriously enough. Such experiences as these, showing how man is composed of various parts, when he faces himself in his true being and in his Luciferic nature, such experiences always make for progress, however slight. When we have made some slight progress, as we can do by meditation, we must not think that we are in a position to command a view of the whole spiritual world. We can only advance by very slow degrees. There are two natures in Faust—the Wagner nature and that other—the nature which is always pressing forward. Goethe has worked this point out very beautifully in the revision which he made in his mature years. As soon as Faust had been led to Christianity, Goethe felt that he must show the working of the Wagner nature in him. That is why Faust and Wagner take that walk together on Easter Day. It is the struggle going on in Faust’s soul which is here dramatically represented to us under the guise of two distinct persons. The higher man in Faust strives to rise: the Wagner-nature holds him back. A spark of comprehension of the spiritual world has been enkindled in Faust, therefore, when the Poodle meets him he perceives more than the actual material Poodle. It is really something like a soul-force speaking in Faust in the conversation with Wagner:

‘Faust: Dost thou see yon black dog, ranging through shoot and stubble?

Wagner: I saw bim long ago; he struck me not !’ the least.

Faust: (the higher nature) Look at him narrowly! What mak’st thou of the beast?

Wagner-nature: A poodle, who like any poodle breathing, casts for the scent, strayed from his master’s heels.’

These words of Wagner are, in fact, objections or pretexts which Faust, in reality, is making to himself. Behind the visible, Faust is beginning to perceive the invisible. He has already become aware of its existence. It is a perception created by experiences, a spark from the spiritual world which has descended into him. And here we see how honest Goethe is and how loyal to his artistic principles; only we must understand him aright. Faust now feels the Luciferic in himself. As you know, the Luciferic is connected with stubbornness, with secret egoism. Faust takes this Luciferic attribute with him even when his very soul is permeated by the Christ Impulse. It is this Luciferic attribute in Faust which causes the Gospel of St. John which he wishes to translate, to appear to him as incomplete.

To the man who understands, the Goethe commentators appear almost comic. They certainly follow him, even going so far as to attribute to the author himself the sayings he divides among his various characters. Faust does not yet understand the Gospel-Text. Otherwise he would have remained satisfied with the words, ‘In the Beginning was the Word.’ He hesitates, because he does not understand them. To the professors it seemed as if Faust did understand these words; but this is not the case. Faust does not understand them as yet. He can well perceive the ‘Might,’ the ‘Deed;’and he gauges the Gospel from the standpoint of his own rational understanding. This method now produces the exactly opposite effect; before, Faust was thrust back into the sensuous world, now, he is raised up into the spiritual world. In this case, his limitations have proved of use to him. When he writes ‘Thought’ and ‘Might’ and ‘Deed,’ he is raised up into the spiritual world, because there is then a spark of spiritual force in Faust’s soul. The spirits then appear, and Mephistopheles appears once more as the messenger from the Earth-Spirit... Mephistopheles, that shadowy figure, a combination of Lucifer and Ahriman.

Thus you see that in the endeavour of Faust to penetrate into the spiritual worlds we must recognise the struggle of Goethe himself,—and at the present time there is much for us to learn from this. Very much. My special task, both in this lecture and the last (the one delivered on Easter Sunday), has been to press home to you the fact, that a mind imbued with the desire to penetrate the hidden depths, finds it a hard matter to approach the Christ-Impulse, if that mind, fettered by its pride and arrogance, rests on its own strength alone, and will not accept what Spiritual Science is able to offer it. On the other hand, I wished to show in the example of Faust the might of that which entered the world with the Christ-Impulse. The time will come when men will learn to understand more and more perfectly the inner nature of the Christ-Impulse, by the help of Spiritual Science. The fact remains, that centuries after it was poured into the earthly evolution of man, something else appears in this human evolution that cannot be properly understood by man. But as soon as he begins to understand this something aright, by this very understanding ho will be brought to a deeper realisation of the Christ-Event. This is an illustration of what the Christ-Impulse really is, an illustration afforded by the history of the world for the earthly evolution of mankind.

As you know, six hundred years after the Christ-Impulse entered the evolution of mankind, a Prophet arose in a certain community, who at first rejected and denied the existence of all that the outpouring of the Christ-Impulse brought into human evolution. I refer to Mahomet. We really must not fall into the superstitions of the nineteenth century, those superstitions which explained, from the rationalistic standpoint, matters which can only be explained from the spiritual standpoint. To earnest students of Spiritual Science the words of a particularly learned man, when speaking of Mahomet, must indeed seem laughable. He speaks thus: Yes! He declared that angels came to him in the form of doves, and whispered into his ear. What they told him he transcribed later as the Koran!—But Mahomet, said the learned man, was an impostor. He had put into his ears a few grains of which doves are especially fond. Then the doves flew to him, and after having taken the grains they flew away again!—This was the sort of explanation given both within and without Christendom in the very learned nineteenth century.

The time will come when we shall really laugh at such explanations, although they may be fully able to satisfy the materialist. But we must take Mahomet more seriously. We must realise that what was working in his soul was indeed a relationship with the spiritual world, such as Goethe strove to discover for his Faust. But what did Mahomet feel? What did he discover? I am only able to touch upon this today, another time I will describe it in detail. What did Mahomet discover? Well! As you know, Mahomet strove after a world for which he had an expression, which is contained in the one word—‘God.’ The world to him was a Monon, a monotheistic expression of God. This world naturally contained nothing of the essence of Christianity. But Mahomet, all the same, did see into the spiritual world. He entered into that elemental world of which I spoke just now. He promised his followers that they too should enter this spiritual world after passing through the Gate of Death. But he could only describe to them that spiritual world which he himself had learnt to see. What kind of spiritual world is this of Mahomet? It is the Luciferic world which Mahomet describes to his followers as the goal to which they should strive to attain, and which appears to him to be Paradise. And if we come down from the abstract to the concrete, and consider the essence of the Islamic endeavour to reach the spiritual world, we shall recognise what Spiritual Science also proclaims. But this spiritual world of Mahomet is that over which Lucifer has dominion. This Luciferic world has been misinterpreted as Paradise, as that world towards which all human endeavour should be directed.

It must indeed make a deep impression upon our minds when we study the historical evolution of the world in the light of this important phenomenon. It must cause us to reflect deeply when we realise, as we proceed on our spiritual way, that a great Prophet appeared and promulgated the error that the Luciferic world was identical with Paradise. I do not wish such an idea to enter your minds as being merely an abstract truth. The effect of that upon the soul might be really shattering, if one dwelt upon it too much.

But now, my dear friends, what steps must the Mahometan take to enter his spiritual world? It would be interesting to count the numbers of those present today who have read all through the Koran I For it is no easy matter to read the whole Koran, with its endless repetitions, and its style, so wearisome to the Western mind. But there are Mahometans, who have read the Koran from beginning to end, no less than seventy thousand times! That means that the inspired word has been so impressed upon the soul that it becomes a living reality! If we Christians have nothing to learn from the contents of this religion, we can at least learn that the inner life of this community, marred as it is by spiritual error, is yet very different from ours, with all our spiritual enlightenment! The most a European does, is to read his Faust. When he has forgotten it he reads it again. Again he forgets it and reads it once more. But the individual who has read Faust even a hundred times would indeed be hard to find. This is quite easy to understand when we consider the Western methods of education up to the present time. For how would it be possible to read everything that has been printed by Western civilisation seventy thousand times? That is quite comprehensible. But we can learn one lesson. It is one thing simply to become acquainted with something important for the soul’s progress: but it is quite another thing to live with it and by constant repetition to make it part of oneself. This latter is an experience that must be understood and an understanding of this cannot be gained by following the methods of thought pursued by our Western nations. But we ought to ponder over these questions. Words such as have been spoken in these lectures have not been spoken merely for the sake of talking, but to arouse you to contemplation and reflection, to increase the sense of our responsibility to ourselves and to the world, in relation to the potential and inevitable future of Spiritual Science.

In many respects we are living in a difficult age. All the terrible outer events which surround us at the present day are but the outer signs of our whole difficult age. It is a mistake to regard this awful time as a disease, in the same way as we refer to any ordinary illness. For sickness is often a process of healing. The real disease has preceded the outward physical manifestation of sickness. So it is with this cataclysm of misery (the War) which is sweeping over the world. It was preceded by something unhealthy, and humanity has yet to fathom much lower depths than it has any desire even to perceive.

Oh, my dear friends! What a load of grief must weigh down the souls of those who contemplate our present time and its tasks! And when they consider the small amount of understanding which so many people bring to bear upon those tasks, the anguish of the soul becomes well-nigh intolerable! When we consider the opinions of men of today—how they think!—how they feel!—their attitude!—and when we remember that it is these thoughts, these feelings, this attitude which will crystallise into outward expression; and when we see how little men have already learnt from outward experience; when we contemplate all these things, truly the soul is filled with an immeasurable sorrow, which must often and often recur!

Can we really foretell the future? To take our most recent experiences: What has humanity learnt during these last few months of trial? Compare man’s opinions today with what they were eight months ago. What is the result? We find the same errors of judgment. The same outlook. Where men, eight months ago, believed themselves to be in the right, now, today, eight months later, after all these awful experiences, they still believe themselves to be in the right. They even assert that these terrible events have taken place with the express purpose of proving that they were right. I can never express the infinite pain with which one observes the lack of discrimination in mankind, the failure to perceive that this time should be considered as a time of probation, a time for gaining knowledge. But one may hope that at least those who come within the influence of Spiritual Science may learn something from these experiences if they will consider them in connection with a study of Faust.

Again and again would I impress upon the minds of all anthroposophical students, that intense earnestness and a pure and holy desire for truth must be inseparable from all anthroposophical studies. Any motive other than the honest desire for truth, in such a movement as ours, will take its revenge. Anything of which it is possible to say: ‘Pardon me, I heard you declaiming’ must be sternly repressed and striven against.

My dear friends! Is it not strange when we see the traditional Wagner upon the stage, to hear learned men, contemporary rationalists and philosophers jeering loudly at the conception of the true Wagner, instead of striking their breasts and recognising themselves in Wagner. The real Wagner reigns everywhere. He sits in the Master’s chair and in the laboratory. A great truth would be proclaimed in our scientific and philosophic literature if the greater number of authors would choose the pseudonym of ‘Wagner.’ For Wagner is the real author of all our contemporary philosophies.

I greatly fear that in the ranks of Spiritual Science, my dear friends, there are indeed many who have ample cause to smite the breast and by a stern self-examination to lay bare the secrets of their souls, so that they may discover how much of what they find there is mere ‘spouting’ and how much is reality and a pure desire for truth!

With this note of warning addressed to your hearts and to the innermost forces of your souls, I will close these observations, the continuation of which, owing to my enforced absence, will have to be postponed for some little time.

• 1. This is the literal rendering of the German in the passage.
• 2. Translation by E. K.

Although the struggle between good and evil is described throughout the Bible, perhaps the most dramatic and esoteric images of this battle are contained in the Apocalypse. John the Evangelist, to whom these visions were entrusted at age ninety-seven, had been preparing for them all his life. Known to the high priests as Lazarus, a brilliant young nobleman in Jerusalem, he was educated in the wisdom of the Jewish traditions. He was then the first to be initiated by Christ when, at age thirty-three, he was raised from the dead at Bethany. Later known as the “disciple whom Jesus loved,” he was the only one of the twelve disciples strong enough to be present at Christ's crucifixion. His work and suffering on behalf of the nascent Christian church through the next sixty years eventually led him to imprisonment on the island of Patmos during the reign of the Roman Emperor Domitian (A.D. 81–96).

The visions recorded in the Apocalypse were given to him during this imprisonment with instructions that he write them down for others. They are intended to encourage, admonish, instruct, strengthen, and inspire us in the great battle against evil that will continue into the distant future. As in any protracted battle, knowledge of the adversary's plans, indeed, knowledge of one's own leaders' strategic intentions, is essential. In the past the Apocalypse has sometimes been used to inspire fear and to motivate human souls to strive to be better Christians. But such use constitutes misuse. Fear is a tool of the adversary powers, not of Christ and his followers. The Apocalypse received by John is nothing if not a Christian book, and when properly understood, expands our conception of Christianity to cosmic proportions again.

It reveals in images, that is, a kind of picture language, the deepest secrets of earthly and human evolution. John was instructed to pass these images on to humanity so that, through knowledge, we can be better equipped to evolve spiritually and meet the unfolding power of the adversaries. The images themselves contain the power of the Word, the Logos himself, the power of all becoming and evolving. Taken into the soul they transform; over time they can initiate. This is the connection between the Apocalypse and the work of Rudolf Steiner, who said that simply hearing and reading the results of anthroposophical research can gradually transform the human soul and awaken in us the ability to perceive the spirit.

Rudolf Steiner's writings and lectures on the Bible in general and the Apocalypse in particular involve a dimension of our humanity that is underappreciated in traditional religious streams: the dimension of human knowledge. In the ancient past it was known that knowledge of spiritual realities was attainable, although only by initiates. Today, only knowledge of the physical world is considered valid, while people interested in spiritual things must be satisfied with faith. However, faith alone cannot make sense of the Apocalypse, and traditional Christian theologians are not sure what to do with the book. Its source is non-earthly. It is prophecy, but unlike Old Testament prophecy, we cannot look for its fulfillment in the New Testament. The thinking behind it derives from a source either beyond or preceding the modern, scientific mind.

But when modern methods of science, exact thinking and observation, are applied to spiritual questions, then knowledge of the spirit is possible. In his basic books Rudolf Steiner describes the spiritual scientific method with its three steps of Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition. The results of this method are found throughout Steiner's work. They include, among other things, descriptions of the evolution of the earth including its future. This description of future events provides the basis for Steiner's lectures on the Apocalypse. For this reason, a general knowledge of anthroposophy and Steiner's terminology is required to understand these lectures.

This requirement is especially pressing since these lectures are not transcriptions of complete stenographic reports. They have been reconstructed from notes hand written by individuals who attended the lectures. Hilde Stockmeyer took notes during the first Munich lecture while Mathilde Scholl was responsible for the other three. The notes by an unknown auditor that form the basis for the German edition of the lectures held in Kristiania (Oslo) are the most fragmentary. They are stylistically uneven, with frequent omissions and gaps in the manuscript. The lecture of June 14, 1907, held in Paris comes to us through notes taken by Edouard Schuré. Because of their brevity these lectures are, in a sense, incomplete. The reader would do well first to read Steiner's most comprehensive lectures on the Apocalypse, held in Nürnberg¹ and refer to them again while reading the present lectures. Although there is little contained in these present lectures not already mentioned in Nürnberg, this new volume is quite useful just because of its brevity.

The lecture of May 21, 1909, contains what is probably the earliest mention of Christ's reappearance in Steiner's work. While describing the sixth post-Atlantean cultural epoch from the point of view of the development of manas, the transformed astral body, Steiner says that those who have made themselves capable of recognizing Christ will see him in his etheric body, “for he will come again.” A few months later, on January 25, 1910, the second coming of Christ was predicted for the twentieth century. Eight days hence, on February 2, 1910, it was narrowed down to the decade between 1930 and 1940. We can see from this sequence an example of the way in which Steiner apprehended facts from the spiritual world. After first perceiving some spiritual reality he could narrow his focus and inquire even more closely with his clairvoyant consciousness.

Eventually Steiner pointed to the year 1933 for the appearance of Christ in the etheric, an event made possible only through the expiration of Kali Yuga and through the evolution of certain faculties of the human soul. Human beings will become increasingly able to perceive the surrounding world of formative forces. At first this perception is a “delicate seed that can be trampled to death by brutal materialism.”

But the year 1933 appears to have brought something quite other to humanity. Emil Bock in his book the Apocalypse² describes how Rudolf Steiner speaks in 1924 of the work of Christ's opponent, the demon of the sun, called “the beast” in the Apocalypse. In order to grasp the etheric event of Christ's reappearance, it is necessary to encounter the beast, the adversary of humankind who “rises up” in 1933. Steiner considered the simultaneous appearance of Christ and the Antichrist to be a first in world history. The double aspect of the year became apparent: the renewal on a wide scale of Paul's experience of Christ on the way to Damascus, and the opening of the abyss of evil. Human beings have been driven by the struggle against evil in all its forms to the very brink of existence, where they have perceived Christ. Although Steiner almost always stressed the positive, he could certainly also describe the negative, dark aspects of any subject under investigation. The “war of all against all,” for example, is given a full description in the Nürnberg cycle, and is also mentioned here. This great culmination of egotism known as the war of all against all, is to take place at the end of the seventh post-Atlantean epoch, which would place it three to four thousand years from the present. Because of misunderstandings concerning Steiner's statements on the dates for this war, it is important to point out that he did not say this war would occur at the end of the twentieth century. He spoke only of conditions at the end of our century that would be similar to a war of all against all.

He did say, however, that the working of Sorat, the two-horned beast described in chapter 13 of the Apocalypse, was connected to the number 666 and therefore, we could expect an intensification of his influence around the year 1998. Sorat's influence is not to be confused with the war of all against all, or with the incarnation of Ahriman, an event projected to take place in the early part of the third millennium. For a complete discussion of the nature and timing of these events, as well as a clear distinction between the three adversaries of human evolution—Lucifer, Ahriman, and the Asuras—the reader should refer to three outstanding articles by Hans-Werner Schroeder which appeared in the Newsletter of the Anthroposophical Society in America, Summer 1979, Spring 1980, and Summer 1980. Many questions that might arise in reading these lectures will find their answer there.

A note concerning the translation: The terms for intervals of time—period, epoch, age, culture, time, times, and so on—are not used in a consistent, technical manner. Steiner himself did not employ the German terms in this way. The seven post-Atlantean cultural epochs, for example, are designated by a variety of German words: Kulturperiode, Kultur, Zeitraum, Kulturepoche, Zeitepoche, Zeit, and so on. In any given context, readers must discern for themselves which particular time-cycle is meant. It did not seem right to impose a rigid terminology upon Steiner when he himself avoided one.

In the New Testament it says that the second coming of Christ will occur in the realm of the clouds. What Steiner's lectures make clear is that some of these clouds will be very dark, bringing thunder and lightning.

James H. Hindes

• 1. Rudolf Steiner, The Apocalypse of St. John, 4th rev. ed (New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1977).
• 2. Emil Bock, The Apocalypse of St. John (Edinburgh: Floris Books, 1951).

My dear friends! We have been studying the position of the human being in relation to the Guardian of the Threshold, and have led the soul in progressive steps into an understanding of the relationship a person has with the Guardian of the Threshold along the path of knowledge. Today we will initially focus our attention on the situation before Guardian of the Threshold, bringing it once again fully alive before our souls, in order to progress a bit forward by means of this esoteric consideration.

A person must forsake, and here I repeat what is appropriate for today and has been covered in prior lessons, a person must forsake the physical world, in which his customary awareness is in force. He comes to know that the sensory-physical world can be grand and joyful, but also full of sorrow and pain, that it can in fact be majestic, and that he has every reason in the world to remain within it, in his awareness. But he also comes to know that he cannot ever get to know himself if he only directs his contemplative eye and sensitive soul out upon this physical world. And he must say to himself, that it is quite grand, arrayed color upon color and arranged form on form, but that just what he himself springs from and is patterned after cannot be found in the encircling wide reaches around.

Yet even at this moment there rings forth from all sides unto a person, as the most noteworthy challenge in one’s life, the word of self-awareness: O man, know yourself!

And in this way, a person will become clearly aware that in customary life he is certainly safeguarded from entering unprepared into what in certainty is the world of his own essential being. Moreover, the Guardian of the Threshold is the same high being who shelters a person as he enters the spiritual world every night in sleep, who shelters the person from consciously experiencing what in sleep is all around him, for otherwise he would be terribly upset in experiencing all this in sleep, if he experienced it unprepared, so much so that he would not be able to continue on in waking life as a human being with strength intact. But at the same time, the Guardian of the Threshold makes it clear to a person that he, the Guardian himself, is the only portal to true, to authentic knowledge.

At this point, a person notices that he comes to an abyss, before entering the realm of knowledge, an abyss displayed as a bottomless chasm. The supporting pillars, that one stands on in the physical world, are gone. One cannot simply march over it. One can only carry himself across when freed of the physical, expressed symbolically, when one “grows wings”, so that one journeys over the abyss as a being of spirit and soul.

But first the Guardian of the Threshold calls out for you to be mindful in regard to the abyss, particularly in regard to the beasts that emerge as spirit-formations from the abyss, for these beasts are the external reflections of impure willing, feeling, and thinking, and these beasts must first be overcome. And in vivid pictures displayed before one’s eyes, willing, feeling, and thinking are revealed in the three beasts, one shown as spectral, one ghoulish, and so forth.

Then the Guardian of the Threshold shows us in greater depth how, in and of themselves, thinking, feeling, and willing can be strengthened, according to whether one has resolved in full awareness to overcome the beasts. And then, before someone actually enters the spiritual world, it is necessary to engage in situational meditations in perceiving the spiritual world, within which to discover how the cosmos speaks to a person, how the hierarchies speak to him, how at first all the things are proclaimed that await him there in the spiritual world.

And we will become progressively more aware, through what is played out before our souls in the mantras, that a person must become something else, if he would stride over the abyss, if he would live within what is on the other side of the abyss. Ever more and more, we will become aware that here on the earth, we are in the company of the beings of the three realms of nature and in the company of people, but over there we are in the company of disembodied souls and in the company of the spirits of the higher hierarchies. A different sort of acquaintanceship is present there. Quite a different constitution of soul is required there for this quite different acquaintanceship.

Once again, it is the business of the Guardian of the Threshold there to forcefully advise a person about how to comport himself, specifically about how to comport himself when striding across the Threshold and actually confronting the things of the spiritual world in their reality, about how in arriving there he must come to possess a wholly different soul-constitution.

There, a person will be aware that within himself two conditions of soul can become a reality, the soul-condition of customary awareness on this side of the abyss, and the soul-condition outside of the physical and etheric bodies on the other side of the abyss, which is the soul-condition of the purely spiritual world.

There, where the difference in these soul-conditions appear, great dangers await a person, dangers however, that initially present themselves in such a way that we have to characterize them as minor departures from normal conditions of soul, but that remain always within the soul when we characterize them properly, for they involve an extreme sickly soul-deformation. It must of course always be said, that when one’s path in the higher worlds is undertaken in the way so painstakingly delineated in the book How to Know Higher Worlds, in many smaller published anthroposophical works, and in the second part of my Outline of Occult Science, then straying from a normal soul-constitution should not happen, at least not easily. A person passing over into the spiritual world through healthy human understanding should be as fully aware of knowledge, initially, as one is through initiation. But a person must know that he may emerge in two different ways from the daily condition of soul-life that he is immersed in, if he does not pay attention to the proper sign-posts along the spiritual world’s pathway.

Here on this side of the Threshold we stand upon the earth, upon the fixed elements of earth. The ground is under our feet. The ground supports us. The watery element is around us, that also takes part in the formation of our own body. This watery element cannot support us in normal life, but infuses throughout us, attaching itself to our blood. It is contained within our forces of growth, within our forces of nourishment. The air is what we breathe. The aeriform, the gaseous element is all around us. Warmth is also all around us, the warmth-ether, the fourth element.

They are disconnected from one another in normal life. Where there is solid earth, there is no water. Where there is water, there is no air. Where there is air, there is no water. Only the fiery warmth presses into and throughout it all, for it is the only one that begins to press itself into everything.

But the moment we take leave, even the first time, my dear friends, the moment we take leave of our physical body, these differentiations cease. The different elements cease to have individual borders. We ourselves enlarge, we extend ourselves out, and we are simultaneously in earth, water, fire, and air. We can no longer differentiate one from another. The attributes held individually by the four elements cease. The earth no longer supports us, for its fixed solidity ceases. Water no longer forms us, for its formative forces cease. In other words, when we plunge into water, it is not as in swimming, where we are separated from the water, but rather it is as if we dissolve into it, as ice dissolves into warm water, as if in becoming one with the water, then we no longer carry, when we pass over into the spiritual world, we no longer carry our blood as a separate element in our vascular circulation, but rather our blood becomes one with the ever-moving watery element of the universe. And just so, air ceases to be a formative breathing-force in us. And warmth ceases to engender our ego-force, ceases to inflame us in warmth to the feeling of individuality. It all ceases. This must be confronted, it must be confronted in the proper manner, this cessation of the differentiation of earth, water, air, and fire.

To do this we may engage, in thought, in having already flown over the abyss. We have arrived on the other side, my dear brothers and sisters. There the Guardian of the Threshold calls out to us, that we should turn, lift our gaze, and face him.

Now think, my dear brothers and sisters, have a lively imagination, imagine a person’s arrival there on the other side, where in certainty the knowledge of the spiritual world is revealed to him. He is there. The Guardian of the Threshold prompts him to look about, to take up the admonitions that he now needs, that in a certain fashion he has now become accustomed to, in the soul-condition that is present there, on the other side of the Threshold, within the spiritual world, there where he lives pressed into the four elements themselves, into earth, water, air, and fire.

Just there a great danger appears, and please forgive the seeming triviality of the expression, my dear brothers and sisters, but if the person has possibly fallen in love with the illusion of disconnectedness of the solid earth, from the formative forces of water, from the creative forces of air, from the ego-awakening forces of warmth, then he may feel delighted merely in spiritual bliss, in giving himself over to the wonder of the spirit, and so he might remain within this spirit-bliss.

A person may be overwhelmed, as the alluring power of Lucifer musters up against him. It depends on his karma, whether a person is more or less susceptible to the alluring power of Lucifer. If he is susceptible, so that he simply totally and completely falls in love with dissolving into earth, water, air, and fire, then the Luciferic attaches itself to him, and he will no longer be able to emerge from this demeanor of soul. He runs the risk, when he once again returns to daily life, of remaining within this soul-demeanor. And so the Guardian of the Threshold must and does call out to him, “You may not do it. You may not fall under the sway of Lucifer. In the dissolution in earth, water, fire, and air you may not simply feel the solitary wonder of bliss. You must take yourself firmly in hand, or else, when you again return to the physical world, as a person in the physical world, when you take up the soul-condition of customary awareness of the physical world, then from then on you will be a person quite confused.”

That is the Luciferic danger, that on the return from the spiritual world, from the other side of the Threshold, a person may be bewildered and no longer have his senses about him, but would be an enthusiastic dreamer, an enthusiastic adherent of idealism, disdainful of customary awareness. That one may not do. And the Guardian of the Threshold admonishes, insistently, that one should be resolutely determined to live in the way corresponding to whatever world one is in, be it earthly or transcendental.

But the Guardian of the Threshold sets down a second admonition. The second admonition is this, that one should take care, when one has arrived on the other side with his thinking, feeling, and willing split apart, one should take care of how much of his thinking, feeling, and willing at hand is still connected to the earthly, is still inclined to the earthly.

There a person can once again be predisposed to remain in what has given him the experiences on this side in the fixed support of earth, to hold on tightly and cross over to the other side of the Threshold with a materialistic soul-constitution, to cross over with the formative forces of water frozen, solidified. Then he can become afflicted with an overweening earthly pride, and can say to himself, “In life on earth I have breathed in, have drawn into myself the very breath, out of which in times past the Father-God has formed human souls, human lives, which I can do also, when freed from earthly life’s confines.”

But if a person carries over into the spiritual world what he perceives in his breath as the creative force of God, then he falls under the sway of the Ahrimanic alluring power. In this condition he cannot return, because before he would return, there in the spiritual world he is enfolded in powerlessness. He would be non-sentient, more or less. His awareness would be disabled, crippled. In this manner, his awareness having been stunted, he would more or less be a sort of tool or implement of the Ahrimanic powers there in the spiritual world.

It is certainly so today since the beginning of the age of Michael, that the spiritual life of human beings, which today is crass and crude, frozen in materialism, is for the most part carried over as such into the spiritual world. And what this means, what it entails, is that the Ahrimanic powers enfold the human being in their grasp whenever his awareness has been stunted into something other than the condition of full wakefulness, and yes, my friends, this has been in evidence everywhere energetically ever since the outbreak of the great World War.

As I have most certainly said many times since the outbreak of the World War, the history of this war cannot be written about from the physical plane’s standpoint alone. Documents by themselves do not reveal the truth, that of the thirty or forty people who were most certainly engaged in the production of the war, a great number at various times were in a state of clouded awareness, and were therefore implements of the Ahrimanic powers. In this way much of what transpired in the World War was a legacy of Ahrimanic powers. This World War can only be written about in an occult manner. Whatever one has seen after a fashion, in his wanderings on this side of the Threshold, of various leading personalities immediately before the outbreak of the World War, all that can be taken truly to be indicative of the habits of soul that are carried over to the other side of the Threshold, and over there then become stunted, become stunted in awareness, and become, therefore, a working force of the Ahrimanic powers.

A person must be clear and fully self-possessed about this, that he may not carry back to this side, the soul-constitution of the other side of the Threshold. He may not carry the soul-constitution of this side of the Threshold to the other side, but rather, for every domain, this side and the other side of the abyss, a strongly stark human inner awareness must be developed.

It arises in this manner for all four elements in the admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold. And again, we should delve into this admonition meditatively.

Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, imagine that you are standing there on the other side of the Threshold. The Guardian has beckoned. You look straight at him. First, he calls out to you, admonishing.

Where is earth’s firmness, that supported you?

One no longer has it. But your heart moves, deep within, and would give an answer. But the heart can be moved inwardly in a three-fold manner, an answer emerging by means of and from the cosmos. It can be moved, this heart, by Christ and his force. Then it answers:

I leave its solid ground,

meaning, the earth’s firmness,

as long¹ as the spirit carries me.

That is the right demeanor of soul. I relinquish the pillars of earth, as long as the spirit carries me within the spirit-domain, as long as I am outside of the body. But the heart can also be moved by Lucifer. Then it answers:

I feel delight, that I no longer need the support.

So speaks the person in his lofty pride, in his self-satisfaction, as if he also would not need the support, when he traverses back into the physical world. Or the heart can be moved by Ahriman. Then it answers:

I will hammer it still harder by the spirit’s might.

The support is referred to here, and carrying the hammered support out and over.

No one should shrink back in fear from meditative soul-consideration of all three answers again and again, in order in this way to be able to choose and align with the first answer in freedom. For one must feel the inherent inward vacillation, the alignment with Lucifer, then with Ahriman. One must place this in meditation firmly within one’s vision. The meditation in this manner must embody the earthen element. [The first part of the mantra was now written on the board.] First the Guardian speaks:

I) Guardian: Where is earth’s firmness, that supported you?

The human heart must give answer. When moved by Christ, it answers:

Christ: I leave its solid ground, as long as the spirit carries me.

If the soul has been moved by Lucifer, it answers in this way:

Lucifer: I feel delight, that I no longer need the support.

The phrase “as long as” [The words “as long as” were underlined.] emerges from the heart, draws the eternal into temporality, and so transforms the sentence. If the heart has been moved by Ahriman, it answers in this way:

Ahriman: I will hammer it still harder by the spirit’s might.

And then, progressing further, so that the soul can fully devote itself to what stands there before it, the second admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold appears, pointing to the formative force of water. This formative force of water is what builds the fixed organs in us, drawing them out of the fluid elements. All that we take in as nourishment must first become fluid, and then the organs are formed out of it. All of a person’s sharply contoured organs have been cast out of fluid elements. This formative force ceases as soon as a person enters the domain on the other side of the Threshold. The Guardian warns, that this is the case. He calls out to us, when we stand there on the other side of the Threshold, our gaze directed onto his stern face. [The second part of the mantra was now written on the board.]

II) Guardian: Where is water’s forming force, that permeated you?

The person answers, if he has been moved in his heart by Christ, “My life extinguishes it, quenches it, as long as the spirit forms me.” The spirit begins to work on you over there, half out of your body.

Christ: My life extinguishes it,

in the sense of quenching it, putting it out, and by “it” is meant the forming force,

as long as the spirit forms me.

Again appears “as long as”, again unobtrusively. [The words “as long as” were underlined.] If the soul has been moved by Lucifer, however, then the phrase “as long as” is left out, and the sentence emerges with haughty arrogance:

Lucifer: My life expunges it, in the sense of melting it away,

Well, what has been extinguished can be rekindled, but what has been melted away, expunged, remains expunged. “My life expunges it”

that I may be released from it.

If the soul has been moved by Ahriman, then it answers:

Ahriman: My life affixes it, in the sense of holding it fast, that I may carry it to spirit realms.

Please take note, my dear brothers and sisters, how everything in mantric verse is fashioned inwardly, meaningfully, and with confident certainty. Here [The first verse was indicated.] we see, “I leave”, “I feel”, “I will.” The ego speaks in the answer. In the second verse the ego speaks, but not so egocentrically, but rather says, “My life”, as in “My life extinguishes it”, “My life expunges it”, “My life affixes it.” Any entry into all reality is only spoken about properly, if it is spoken about accurately in every aspect. Lassitude in the formation of sentences, which is appropriate for people in the physical domain, may not be carried forward into the spirit-domain. In the spirit-domain speaking must be exact and accurate.

You should also most certainly keep in mind, my dear friends, that it all corresponds to a reality, that this esoteric school has not been constituted out of human intentions, but rather out of those of the spiritual world, as was said at the outset, that all that comes to the fore here in the esoteric school of the Goetheanum, even though it is said through my mouth, is nevertheless a dictum of the spiritual world. This must be so in every rightfully constituted esoteric school, certainly in the present and in times to come, just as it was in the ancient holy mysteries. And this esoteric school is the true Michael School, the institution of those high spiritual beings partaking immediately of the inspiration of the cosmic will of Michael.

Concerning the domain of air, the Guardian of the Threshold once again speaks in admonition,

Where is air’s stimulation,² that waked³ you?

waking you into existence. As Jehovah, by means of his infusion of the breath of life into humans, transformed simple living beings, by means of the stimulus inherent in his breath, into beings that can perceive, so a person, through sensing, through the stimulus that the external world brings to bear on the senses, becomes a being who perceives. But what exactly are the senses?

My dear brothers and sisters, the senses are most certainly just refined organs of breathing. The breath broadens itself out into all the senses. As it lives in the lungs, so it lives in the eyes. Only that in the lungs it is bound up with carbon, but in the eyes with the more refined silica. In one’s organism carbonic acid is produced. [It was drawn in red and the word carbonic acid⁴ was written down.] In the senses silicic acid is produced in a much more refined state. [Drawn in yellow, silicic acid⁵ was written down.] A person lives in his lower pole where oxygen combines with carbonic acid, and in his upper pole, in the domain of his nerve-sense system, where oxygen combines with silicon, with silica, and forms refined silicic acid [green]. A human being lives in such a way, that when the breath forms up in the blood, he produces carbonic acid, and when the breath forms up in the senses, he produces silicic acid [yellow arrows], below and outwardly through the breath carbonic acid, in the senses and returning from the senses within the breathing-process silicic acid in a totally more refined dose.

The Guardian of the Threshold calls out to us concerning what is in the air:

Where is air’s stimulation, that waked you?

He who is moved by Christ in his heart answers:

My soul breathes heaven’s air,

no longer earth’s air, but heaven’s air,

as long as the spirit is about me.

The heart moved by Lucifer answers:

My soul cares not for it in spirit blissfulness.

The heart moved by Ahriman answers:

My soul absorbs it, that I may learn godlike to create.

As Jehovah once created with his breath, so those swayed by Ahriman absorb the air, in order to carry it along while crossing over into the spiritual world.

III) Guardian: Where is air’s stimulation, that waked you?

The heart moved by Christ speaks:

Christ: My soul breathes heaven’s air, as long as the spirit is about me

The heart moved by Lucifer speaks:

Lucifer: My soul cares not for it in spirit blissfulness.

The air’s power to stimulate is not noticed at all.

The heart moved by Ahriman speaks:

Ahriman: My soul absorbs it, that I may learn godlike to create.

Concerning the fiery or warmth elements, the Guardian now speaks his last elementary word, admonishing that a person should not lose himself in the element of warmth, but also not carry over into the spiritual world the warmth-element as it is in physical existence, as displayed on earth.

Just before I do this, however, my dear brothers and sisters, I would like to call your attention to this progression along the ascent:

“I” is spoken by the person first.
“My life” is spoken next by the person.
“My soul” is then spoken by the person.

Now the Guardian speaks in warning concerning the fiery elements: [The fourth part of the mantra was written on the board, and at the same time in the Christ-line “as long as” was underlined.]

IV) Guardian: Where is fire’s cleansing,

or cleansing catharsis

that inflamed in you the I?

Our ego lives in warmth, in what presses into and throughout us as warmth. I have often, my dear brothers and sisters, remarked on this in the esoteric school, that the fixed elements remain unconscious within, and also the fluid elements, even though in one’s feeling of satisfaction, one already feels the perfusion of the fluid elements. In satiety or in hunger one experiences the essential nature of the fluid element. The aeriform element is experienced soulfully. A person becomes breathless when not connecting properly with air, and fear comes with breathlessness. This already enters the realm of soul. Warmth is something in which one feels wholly at home. He participates in his condition of warmth or of cold with the whole of his ego. Fire inflames his ego.

The heart moved by Christ answers:

Christ: My “I” blazes in God-Fire, as long as the spirit kindles me.

A person does not need the material warmth of earth when the spirit supplies the spark and ignites his ego. For the ego blazes there not in earthly warmth, not in earthly fire, but within the fire of God.

But the heart moved by Lucifer answers:

Lucifer: My “I” has flaming power through spirit sun-craft.

The heart moved by Ahriman answers, as if the fire begun upon the earth is taken as his own and carried over into the spiritual world, to master the spiritual world with the ego-fire of the physical world.

Ahriman: My “I” has its own fire, that flames purely through self-unfolding.

The ego will not blaze up except by deploying its own fire.

Once again, the progression arising in the formulation first appears in the person speaking “I”.

I leave
I feel
I will

It then becomes more objective, in that the person addresses the things pertaining to himself as “Mine”.

My life extinguishes it
My life expunges it
My life affixes it

It then goes more inwardly, so inner nature becomes objective.

My soul breathes
My soul cares not
My soul absorbs

Now he climbs somewhat further into himself. And take note of the difference, my dear brothers and sisters. Early on is said merely “I”. Then “I” becomes objective, “my I”, as if it were another’s, as one would speak of another’s property. One is externalized even more, one is externalized out of the physical body, even to the extent initially of allowing one to speak fully egoistically of the ego, and one says:

My “I”

as if it were an object. That is the proper way to render it here.

One becomes acquainted with this rendering, my dear brothers and sisters, in all its depth and intensity, when one speaks with souls who have gone through the portal of death and have been in the spiritual world awhile. They do not say “I”, but rather they always say “my I”. I have not yet heard of one departed after death who has said “I”, except at most for a very brief time after death. So some time after death, the dead one says “my I”, because he gazes upon the ego with the eyes of the gods. It becomes objective for him, characteristically objective. Therefore, an account, from someone who has been dead for a somewhat longer time, cannot be accurate if the departed says “I”, if he does not say “my I”. So here in the fourth progressive section, before the Guardian of the Threshold, the soul says “my I”.

And that, my dear friends, is the wonderful spoken exchange at the Threshold, between the Guardian of the Threshold and the human personality, that actually takes place when one stands there before the Guardian of the Threshold, as illustrated here, which must be attended to, in order to catch the feeling in its essential actuality when deploying and immersing oneself in this dialogue properly in meditation. So you form the words up in meditation properly, my dear brothers and sisters, the mantric words coming to you here today, when in a certain sense you hear the words that you yourself are speaking, but only in the course of the Guardian having been heard to be speaking before us first in a manner of soul. Therefore this is how one meditates, as if hearing four times over the Guardian of the Threshold at the start of each section, concerning earth, water, air, and fire, and then allowing one’s own true soul to answer, but in such a manner that one immediately hears the first answer as if inwardly ensouled by Christ, the second answer in the voice of the tempter, and the third answer in the voice of the pompous materialistic Ahriman-Spirit, who approaches a person with the desire to carry over into the spirit the manner of being of the mineralized human.

Now, in closing today’s esoteric lesson, we will allow the characteristic way this is to be meditated to sound forth with firm effect.

Where is earth’s firmness, that supported you?
I leave its solid ground, as long as the spirit carries me.
I feel delight, that I no longer need the support.
I will hammer it still harder by the spirit’s might.

Where is water’s forming force, that permeated you?
My life extinguishes it, as long as the spirit forms me.
My life expunges it, that I may be released from it.
My life affixes it, that I may carry it to spirit realms.

Where is air’s stimulation, that waked you?
My soul breathes heaven’s air, as long as the spirit is about me.
My soul cares not for it in spirit blissfulness.
My soul absorbs it, that I may learn godlike to create.

Where is fire’s cleansing, that inflamed in you the I?
My “I” blazes in God-Fire, as long as the spirit kindles me.
My “I” has flaming power through spirit sun-craft.
My “I” has its own fire, that flames purely through self-unfolding.

• 1. so lang: Translating so lang as "so long as" carries a hint of inevitability that this condition is bound to end sooner or later, whereas translating it more correctly as "as long as" still has the same sense of contingency, but additionally carries the sense that in choosing this condition it can carry on forever.
• 2. Reizgewalt means alluring, stimulating power
• 3. erwechte: The verb in this line is not erwachte, which translates as the intransitive awakened, but rather the transitive erweckte, which translates as waked (inspired, excited, aroused).
• 4. Kohlensäure
• 5. Kieselsäure

In an introductory way, I will touch shortly upon a few facts that have already been considered, because we shall need them in the further course of our considerations. I have said that what we may call the threshold between the usual physical world of the senses and the soul-spiritual world lies in man himself, also psychically. It lies in him in such a way that in the usual everyday consciousness with which man is endowed between birth and death, he is really awake only as far as his sense-perceptions, or his perceptive activity, are concerned; he is awake in all that comes to him in the form of ideas—ideas concerning that which he perceives through his senses, or ideas arising out of his own inner being; they make the world intelligible and alive for him. Even a very ordinary self-recollection teaches us (clairvoyant endowment is in no way necessary for this) that when usual human consciousness is fully awake it cannot embrace more than the sphere of the life of ideas and the sphere of sense perceptions. However, we experience in our soul also the world of our feelings and the world of our will. But we have said that we live through this world of our feelings only as we live through a dream; the life of dream enters the ordinary waking consciousness and, inasmuch as we are feeling human beings, we are, in reality, mere dreamers of life. Things occur in the depths of our feeling life, of which our waking consciousness, contained in our ideas and sense perceptions, knows nothing at all. The waking consciousness knows less still concerning the real processes of the life of our will. Man dreams away his feeling life in his usual consciousness, and he sleeps away the life of his will.

Consequently, beneath the life of our thoughts lives a realm in which we ourselves are embedded, and which is only partly known to us; it is only known to us through the waves that break up through the surface.

We have emphasized further, that in this realm, which we dream and sleep away, we live together with human souls that are passing through the existence between death and a new birth. We are only separated from the so-called dead through the fact that we are not in a position to perceive with our ordinary consciousness how the forces of the dead, the life of the dead, the actions of the dead, play into our own life. These forces, these actions of the dead, continually permeate the life of our feeling and the life of our will. Therefore we can live with the dead. And it is indeed important to realize at the present time that the task of Anthroposophy is to develop this consciousness—that we are in touch with the souls of the dead.

The earth will not continue to evolve in the direction of the welfare of humanity unless humanity develops this living feeling of being together with the dead. For the life of the dead plays into the life of the so-called living in many ways.

During the course of these public lectures I have purposely drawn your attention to the historical course of life—what man lives through historically, what he lives through socially, what he lives through in the ethical relationships between people. All this really has the value of a dream, of sleep; the impulses which man develops when he surpasses his personal existence and is active within the community, are impulses of dream and sleep.

People will consider history in quite another way when this has reached their living consciousness; they will no longer consider as history the fable convenue that is usually called history today; but they will realize that historical life can only be understood when that which is dreamed and slept away in usual consciousness, and contains the influences of the deeds, impulses and activities of the so-called dead, is sought in this historical life. The deeds of the dead are interwoven with the impulses of feeling and will of the so-called living. And this is real history.

When the human being has gone through the Gate of Death, he does not cease to be active
within the human community. He continues to be active, although his activity is of another kind. We live under the illusion that our actions are our own, because they flow out of our feelings, out of our impulses of will; in reality they flow out of the deeds of those who have departed, even in the very moment in which we are carrying out our actions.

In the future development of man it will be of great importance to know that when we do something connected with our life in common with other men, we do this together with the dead. But of course, such a consciousness, which is related essentially to the life of the feeling and of the will, must be grasped also by the feeling and by the will. Abstract and dried-out ideas will never be able to grasp this. But ideas that have been taken from the sphere of spiritual science will be able to grasp this. Indeed, people will have to accustom themselves to form quite different conceptions about many things.

You all know that he who is firmly rooted in the comprehension of spiritual-scientific impulses may undertake to remain connected with those who have passed through the Gate of Death. The thoughts of spiritual science, the ideas that we form about the events in the spiritual world, are thoughts that are intelligible to us on earth, but are also intelligible to the souls of the dead. This may result in what we may call “reading to the dead.” When we think of the dead, and in doing so read to them, especially the contents of spiritual science, this is a real intercourse with the dead. For spiritual science speaks a language common to both the souls of the living and of the dead. But what is essential is to approach these things more and more, particularly with the life of feeling, with the illuminated life of feeling.

Man lives, between death and a new birth in an environment which is essentially permeated through and through, not only with living forces, but with living forces full of feeling. This is his lowest sphere. As the insensible mineral kingdom surrounds us during our sense life, so a realm surrounds the dead, which is of such a nature that, when he comes in contact with anything within it, he calls forth pain or joy. Thus, with the dead it is as if we were forced to realize, during life, that as soon as we touch a stone, or the leaf of a tree, we call forth feelings. The departed one can do nothing that does not call forth feelings of joy, feelings of pain, feelings of tension, relaxation, etc., in his surroundings. When we come into contact with the departed human being—this is the case when we read to him—he himself experiences this communion as already mentioned; he becomes aware of this when we read to him; he experiences it in this particular case. In this way the departed one comes in connection with that soul who reads to him, that soul with whom he is in some way related through Karma. The dead is connected with his lowest realm (which we had to bring in connection with the animal kingdom) in such a way that everything he does calls forth joy, pain, etc; he is connected with all that calls forth a relationship with human souls (whether they are human souls living here on the earth, or souls already disembodied and living between death and a new birth) in such a way that his feeling for life is either increased or diminished through what takes place in other souls.

Please realize this clearly. When you read to a so-called living person, you know that he understands what you read to him, in the sense in which we speak of human understanding; but the departed one lives in the contents, the departed one lives in each word that you read to him. He enters into that which passes through your own soul. The departed one lives with you. He lives with you more intensely than was ever possible for him in the life between birth and death. When this companionship with the dead is sought, it is really a very intimate one, and a consciousness endowed with insight intensifies this existence in common with the dead.

If man enters consciously into the realm that we inhabit together with the dead, the intercourse with the dead is such that when you read or speak to the departed one, you hear from him, like a spiritual echo, what you yourself are reading. You see, we must become acquainted with such ideas as these if we wish to gain a real conception of the concrete spiritual world. In the spiritual world things are not the same as here. Here you can hear yourself speak when you are speaking, or you know that you are thinking when you think. If you speak to the dead, or if you enter into a relationship with the dead, your words, or the thoughts you send to him, come to you out of the departed one himself, if you consciously perceive your connection with the dead.

And when you send a message to the dead, you feel as if you were intimately connected with him. If he replies to this message, it seems at first as if you were dimly conscious that the departed one is speaking. You are dimly conscious that the departed one has spoken, and you must now draw out of your own soul what he has spoken. This will make you realize how necessary it is for a real spiritual intercourse to hear from the other one what you yourself think and conceive, to hear out of yourself what the other one says. This is a kind of inversion of the entire relationship between one being and another being. But this inversion takes place when we really enter the spiritual world.

Because the spiritual world is so entirely different from the physical, and because—since about the fifteenth century—people only wish to form conceptions based on the physical world, they displace and obstruct their entrance to the spiritual world. If people would only realize that a world can exist which is, in certain respects—not in all—the direct opposite of what we call the true world; if people would be willing to form ideas which, perhaps, appear most absurd to those who insist upon living only in a materialistic world—then they will transform their souls and attain the possibility of seeing into the spiritual world, which is always around us. It is not that human beings, through their nature, are separated from the spiritual world; but that through habit, through the circumstances of inheritance, they have become entirely unaccustomed, since the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, to forming other ideas than those borrowed from the physical world. This applies even to art. What other scope has modern art than to copy, from the model, what Nature forms outside? Even in art people no longer attach value to what arises freely out of the spiritual life of the soul, and is also something real. But in the free reality that thus arises, people cannot efface what is effective and active in historical events, in the ethical, moral and social life of the community—except that they dream and sleep away this active element. As soon as man goes beyond his own personal concerns, even in the smallest measure—and in every moment of life he goes beyond these—the spiritual world, the world—I must emphasize this again and again—which we share with the dead works through his arm, through his hand, his word, his glance.

As the departed one grows familiar with the realm I have already spoken of, with the lowest one connected with the animal kingdom (just as we become familiar with the mineral, vegetable, animal, and human physical world in the life between birth and death during our gradual growth)—as the departed one continues to develop in the second region, where companionship with all those souls arises, with whom he is karmically connected either directly or indirectly, he evolves to the point of becoming familiar with the kingdom of the Beings who stand above man, if I may use this expression, although it is merely figurative—with the kingdom beginning with the Angeloi and Archangeloi.

Here in the physical world man is, as it were, the crown of creation—many like to emphasize this; he feels himself as the highest of all beings. The minerals are the lowest, then the plants, then the animals, and then man himself He feels that he belongs to the highest kingdom. It is not thus with the dead in the spiritual realm; the dead feels himself connected with the Hierarchies above him, the Hierarchies of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, etc. As man here in the physical world feels, in a certain sense, that the physical kingdom of man evolves and grows out of the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms, so the departed one feels himself sustained and carried by the Hierarchies above him, in the life between death and a new birth.

The way in which the human being gradually becomes familiar with this kingdom of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, etc., can be described as follows:—It is like a liberation from Self. Again we must acquire a conception of these things that cannot be won in the physical world of the senses. In this world of the senses, as we grow up from childhood, we gradually become acquainted with things, first with our nearest surroundings, then with what is to be our life experience in a wider sense, etc. We become acquainted with things in such a way that we know—they approach us little by little. This is not the case between death and a new birth. From the moment on, in which we know that we are connected with the Angeloi, we feel as if we had been united with them since eternity, as if we belonged to them, were one with them; yet we are only able to develop our consciousness by reaching the point of separating the idea of the Angeloi from ourselves. Here in the physical world we make our experiences by taking up ideas. In the spiritual world we make our experiences by separating the ideas from ourselves. We know that we carry them within us—and we know that we are entirely filled by them, but we must separate them from ourselves in order to bring them to consciousness. And so we set free the ideas of Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai.

In the lowest kingdom, man is, as it were, connected with the animalic, which he must strive to conquer, as I have already explained. Then he is connected with the kingdom immediately above this one—the kingdom of the souls with whom he is directly or indirectly linked up through Karma. In this kingdom man experiences his relationship with the Angeloi. His relationship with the kingdom of the Angeloi gives rise, at first, to a great deal of that which creates a right connection with the kingdom of human souls. Hence, in the life between death and a new birth, it is difficult to distinguish between the experiences which man has in common with other human souls and those with the Beings belonging to the kingdom of the Angeloi. There are many links between human beings and the Beings belonging to the kingdom of the Angeloi. Although we can speak of these things merely in comparison, and although we can only allude briefly to them, we may however say:—Just as here, in our physical life, memory leads us back again to some event which we have experienced, so does a Being belonging to the kingdom of the Angeloi lead us to something which we must experience in our life between death and a new birth. Beings belonging to the kingdom of the Angeloi are really the mediators for everything that arises in the life of the so-called dead. And the Angeloi help man in everything that he must do between death and a new birth in connection with the conquest of the animalic (he must raise his animal nature into the spiritual part of his being in order to prepare himself for his next incarnation). If you grasp this in its right meaning you will say:—Because man associates with the Angeloi between death and a new birth, he can form the right kind of relationships in connection with the souls with whom he must come into touch. And because man is in contact with the kingdom of the Angeloi, he can prepare rightly the things that must take place during his next incarnation. The tasks of the Archai, or the Beings belonging to the Spirits of the Time, are common both to the dead and to the living. My explanations will show you that the departed one has more to do with the Angeloi, who regulate his connection to other souls, and with the Archangeloi, who regulate his successive incarnations. But in his association with the Beings of the Hierarchy of the Archai, the dead works together with the so-called living, with those who are incarnated here in the physical body. The dead who is passing through the life between death and a new birth, and the so-called living, in his life between birth and death, are embedded alike in something which the Spirits of the Time weave as an unceasing stream of universal wisdom and universal activity of the will. What the Spirits of the Time thus weave is history, is the ethical-moral life of an age, the social life of an age.

We might say that we can look into the spiritual kingdom and realize:—The so-called dead are there; what they experience in this kingdom—inasmuch as these experiences are their own—is regulated by the Angeloi and Archangeloi; what they experience in common with the so-called living is woven by the Beings who belong to the Hierarchy of the Archai. We cannot fulfill any fruitful work in the social, historical, and ethical-moral life unless we realize this work must come from an element that we share with the dead—the element of the Archai, or Spirits of the Time.

These Spirits of the Time do their work alternately. We have often spoken of this. Through several centuries, one of the Time Spirits weaves the events contained in the stream of historical and social life and in the ethical-moral stream of human events; then another Time Spirit relieves him. The moment in which a Time Spirit relieves another one is most important of all, if we wish to observe what really takes place within the evolution of mankind. We cannot understand this evolution unless we bear in mind the living active influence of the Time Spirits and, in general, of the entire spiritual world. We cannot understand what takes place between man and man unless we consider the kingdom of the Spirit.

Very abstract are man's thoughts concerning that which is social, ethical-moral and historical. He thinks that history, or the stream of events taking place in the course of time, is a continuous current, where one event follows upon the other. He asks:—Why did certain events happen at the beginning of the twentieth century?—Because they were caused by events at the end of the nineteenth century.—Why did certain events happen at the end of the nineteenth century?—Because they were caused by events in the middle of the nineteenth century. And events in the middle of the nineteenth century were caused again by events at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and so on.

This way of considering historical events as the result of immediately preceding events is just the same as if a peasant were to say:—The wheat that I shall harvest this year is the result of the wheat of last year. The seeds remained, and the wheat of last year is again the result of the wheat of the year before last. One thing depends on the other—cause and effect. Except that the peasant does not really follow this rule: he must of course interfere personally in the growth of the wheat. He must first sow the seeds in order that an effect may follow the cause. The effect does not come of itself. From a certain point of view this is one of the most terrible illusions of our materialistic age, for people believe that the effect is the result of the cause; they do not wish to form the simplest thoughts concerning the real truth of these things.

I have already given you an example, by relating to you a sensational event in the life of a human being. It is indeed so, that people prefer to contemplate sensational events rather than consider the other events, which are of exactly the same kind and take place every hour and every moment of our life. I have told you how such an event can occur: A man is accustomed to take his daily walk to a mountainside. He takes this walk every day for a long time. But one day during his walk, on reaching a certain spot, he hears a voice calling out to him:—Why do you go along this path? Is it necessary that you should do this? The voice says more or less these words. On hearing them he becomes thoughtful, steps aside and thinks for a while about the curious thing that has happened to him. Suddenly a piece of rock falls down, which would have killed him had he not stepped aside after hearing the voice. This is a sensational event. But one who considers the world calmly, yet spiritually, will see in this event one of the many which take place every moment of our life. In every moment of our life something else, too, might happen, if this or that would occur.

A very clever man—we know that especially modern people are very clever—would say: Why was this man spared? Because he went away. This is the cause. Very well—but suppose he had not gone away; in this case he would have been killed, and a very clever modern man would argue:--the falling stone is the cause of the man's death. Indeed—seen from outside and in an abstract and formal way—it is true that the falling stone is the cause, and the man's death the effect: but the cause has nothing to do with the effect; it is quite an indifferent matter to the falling stone, where the man was standing. This cause has nothing whatever to do with the effect. Ponder this matter and try to understand what is really contained in all this talk of cause and effect. The so-called cause need not have anything to do with the effect.

The stone would have taken exactly the same course had the man been standing elsewhere. As far as the stone is concerned, nothing has been changed owing to the fact that the man was warned and went away. I gave you an example that, even in outer quite formal things, the so-called cause need have nothing to do with the so-called effect. The whole way of looking at cause and effect is based entirely on abstraction. It is only possible to speak of cause and effect within certain limits. Take this example, for instance: Here you have a tree with its roots. What takes place in the roots can certainly be considered, in certain respects, as the cause of the growing tree; what takes place in the branches can, to a certain extent, be designated as the cause of the growing leaves. You see, the tree is, to a certain extent, a whole; and a concrete way of looking at life considers totalities and the aspect of the whole; an abstract way of looking at life always links up one thing with another, without considering the complete whole. But for a spiritual way of looking at things it is important to bear in mind the whole. You see, where the outer leaves end, the tree ceases to exist, as well as the inner causes of its growth. Where the leaves end, also the forces of their growth end; but something else begins there. Where these forces end, the spiritual eye can see spiritual beings playing around the tree, spiritual elementary beings. Here begins, if I may say so, a negative tree, which stretches out into infinity, but only apparently so, because after a while it disappears. An elementary existence meets what comes out of the tree; where the tree ceases, it comes into contact with the elementary existence, which grows toward it. It is thus in Nature.

The plant ceases to exist when it grows out of the soil, and the causes of its growth cease when the plant ceases. But an elementary existence from the universe grows toward the plant.

In the lecture on human life from the aspect of spiritual science, I have mentioned some of these things. The plants grow out of the soil from below. A spiritual element grows toward the plant from above. It is thus with all beings. What you observe in Nature is contained in all existence. Above all, there is a stream of social, ethical-moral and historical life. Events do not consist in a continuous stream, but a Time Spirit reigns for a while; another one replaces him; a third one replaces him; a fourth one replaces him; and so on. When a Time Spirit replaces another one, there is a difference also in the stream of continuous events. When such a new period begins, it is not possible to say that its events are the immediate effect of preceding events. They are not the effect of the preceding ones, in the sense in which we imagine this.

There is indeed an order of law in the successive course of events, but what we generally call necessity is an illusion, if we look upon it as it is often looked upon today. In the course of continuous events, we have something similar to what we find when we look at the tree—where the tree ceases, the elementary tree begins; but in Nature, a being belonging to the visible kingdom of the senses touches a being that remains invisible to the senses, a super-sensible being; the world of the senses and the super-sensible world touch. There is something similar also in the course of Time. Just as the physical tree ceases and an elementary tree begins, so also in the course of Time, something ceases and something new begins. There are epochs in which old events and old impulses cease, as it were, and are replaced by new ones. At such points of time, people like to keep to Lucifer and Ahriman, who help them to maintain what is really dead. It is possible to keep alive in human consciousness impulses and forces that are, in reality, dead. This is not possible in Nature. If someone cultivates exactly the same kind of ideas in 1914 that were justified in 1876, he can do so of course. He can do this because, in the continuous stream of human events, which is seized by Ahriman and Lucifer, the old can be maintained even if it is already dead. It is the same as if someone were to make a tree grow on and on without ceasing, after it had reached its natural limits. In the course of history we generally find that people cannot face a new epoch rightly; in other words, that they cannot place themselves at the service of the new Time Spirit.

In our age this is particularly important. During the last weeks we have spoken of the spiritual events of 1879. This was the end of an epoch. Something died and ceased to exist, just as the tree ceases. From 1879 onward it became necessary (this is of course still necessary today and will be so for a long time) that people should open themselves to the ideas and impulses coming from the spiritual world. Otherwise the old impulses become Ahrimanic or Luciferic.

These remarks contain something very important. The last third of the nineteenth century was an important time in the evolution of humanity. It was necessary, and it is still necessary, that people should become accessible to the influence of inspired ideas. People must open themselves to these. But looked upon from outside (we shall not only look upon this from outside, but study the deeper inner meaning), looked upon from outside, things have a very hopeless aspect. Impulses did come from the spiritual world. They came streaming in and worked in order that men might be led beyond this point, beyond the year 1879, and in order that they might open themselves to inspired ideas. They were impulses that could give men thoughts enabling them to become conscious, even at the end of the nineteenth century, that whenever we fulfill actions of a historical, social or ethical-moral value within the life of the community, we fulfill them together with our dead, and with the Archangeloi, Angeloi, and Archai. These impulses were there; they were there, but went past many people without leaving a trace. I have said that today I will first consider these things from an outer aspect, and it is good if you realize how apparently everything went past without leaving a trace. In the second half of the nineteenth century important things and important impulses already existed, and there were people who proclaimed and wrote significant thoughts. If we look at these thoughts today they may seem abstract. This is indeed so. But they are not abstract thoughts and they should not remain as they were then. (I repeat once more that this is looked upon from outside, tomorrow we shall consider these things from an inner aspect.) This was the case more or less in all spheres of modern civilized life. For instance—who studies the life of this country, Switzerland, in such a way as to say: In the fifties of the nineteenth century a man lived here in Switzerland, a man with great ideas, that were indeed of a philosophical kind. But had they been accepted by two or three, had they been popularized, would they not have had a very fruitful, spiritualizing influence on the entire history of Switzerland? Who considers, for instance, that in the middle of the nineteenth century a high spirit lived in Otto Heinrich Jäger? He is one of the greatest men of Switzerland. But who knows his name now, and who names him? Who is aware of the fact that although his thoughts had an abstract appearance they were only apparently abstract. They might have become concrete, they might have blossomed and borne fruit, because something very great was in this man, who taught at the Zurich University and wrote books on great thoughts, thoughts that should enter the life of the present. He wrote on the idea of human liberty and its connection with the entire spiritual world. Otto Heinrich Jager wrote, here in Switzerland, a kind of “Philosophy of Spiritual Activity,” from another point of view than my own The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, which arose in the nineties.

Innumerable examples like this one could be given. The most fruitful ideas germinated and greened, but what is recounted today as the spiritual history of the nineteenth century leading into the twentieth century is the least significant part of all that really took place, and the most important part, that influenced it most of all, has not been considered at all.

This is how matter stand, from an exterior aspect, to begin with. Perhaps they will look more hopeful when we shall look at them from an inner standpoint.

[ 1 ] Our study of the Michael Mystery was irradiated by thoughts of the Mystery of Golgotha. For, in effect, Michael is the Power who leads man towards the Christ along the true way of man's salvation.

[ 2 ] But the Michael Mission is one of those that are repeated again and again in rhythmical succession in the cosmic evolution of mankind. In its beneficial influence on earthly mankind it was repeated before the Mystery of Golgotha. It was connected in that time with all the active revelations which the Christ-Force—as yet external to the Earth—had to pour down to the Earth for the unfolding of mankind. After the Mystery of Golgotha, the Michael Mission enters the service of what must now be achieved in earthly humanity through Christ Himself. In its repetitions, the Michael Mission now appears in a changed and ever-progressing form. The point is that it appears in repetitions.

[ 3 ] The Mystery of Golgotha, on the other hand, is an all embracing World-event, taking place once only in the whole course of the cosmic evolution of mankind.

[ 4 ] It was only when humanity had reached the unfolding of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul that the ever-continued danger which was there potentially from the beginning—the danger lest humanity's existence should become severed from the existence of the Divine-Spiritual—made itself fully felt.

[ 5 ] And in the same manner in which the soul of man loses the conscious experience in and with the Divine-Spiritual Beings, there emerges around him that which we today call ‘Nature.’ [ 6 ] Man no longer sees the essence and being of Humanity in the Divine-Spiritual Cosmos; he sees the accomplished work of the Divine-Spiritual in this earthly realm. To begin with, however, he sees it not in the abstract form in which it is seen today—not as physically sensible events and entities held together by those abstract ideal contents which we call ‘Natural Laws.’ To begin with, he sees it still as Divine-Spiritual Being—Divine-Spiritual Being surging up and down in all that he perceives around him, in the birth and decay of living animals, in the springing and sprouting of the plant-world, in the activity of water-wells and rivers, in cloud and wind and weather. All these processes of being around him represent to him the gestures, deeds and speech of the Divine Being at the foundation of ‘Nature.’

[ 7 ] Once upon a time, man had seen in the constellations and movements of the stars the deeds and gestures of the Divine Beings of the Cosmos, whose words he was thus able to read in the heavens. In like manner, the ‘facts of Nature’ now became for him an expression of the Goddess of the Earth. For the Divinity at work in Nature was conceived as feminine.

[ 8 ] Far down into the Middle Ages, the relics of this mode of conception were still at work in the souls of men, filling the Intellectual or Mind-Soul with an Imaginative content.

[ 9 ] When men of knowledge wanted to bring the ‘processes of Nature’ to the understanding of their pupils, they spoke of the deeds of the ‘Goddess.’ It was only with the gradual dawn of the Spiritual Soul that this living study of Nature, filled as it was with inner soul, grew unintelligible to mankind.

[ 10 ] The way in which men looked in this direction in the age of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul is reminiscent of the Myth of Persephone and of the mystery that underlies it.

[ 11 ] Persephone, the daughter of Demeter, is compelled by the God of the Underworld to follow him into his kingdom. Eventually it is achieved that she spends one-half of the year only in the Nether world and dwells for the remainder of the year in the Upper world.

[ 12 ] This Myth of Persephone was still a great and wonderful expression of the way in which Man, in an age of immemorial antiquity, had perceived and known the evolutionary process of the Earth in dream-like clairvoyance.

[ 13 ] In primeval times all the world-creative activity had proceeded from the surroundings of the Earth. The Earth itself was only in process of becoming, and moulded its existence in cosmic evolution from out of the activities of the surrounding world. The Divine-Spiritual Beings of the Cosmos were the creators and moulders of the Earth's existence. But when the Earth was far enough advanced to become an independent heavenly body, Divine-Spiritual Being descended from the great Cosmos to the Earth and became the Earth-Divinity. This cosmic fact the dream-like clairvoyance of primeval mankind had seen and known; and of such knowledge the Myth of Persephone remained—but not only this. For indeed, far down even into the Middle Ages, the way in which men sought to know and penetrate into ‘Nature’ was still a relic of the same ancient knowledge. It was not yet as in these later times, when men only see according to their sense-impressions, i.e., according to that which appears on the surface of the Earth. They still saw according to the forces that work upwards to the surface from the depths of the Earth. And these ‘forces of the depths’—the ‘forces of the Nether world’—they saw in mutual interplay with the influences of the stars and elements working from the Earth's environment.

[ 14 ] The plants in their varied forms grow forth, revealing themselves in many-coloured glory. Therein are at work the forces of Sun and Moon and Stars, together with the forces of the Earth's depths. The ground and foundation for this is given in the minerals, whose existence is entirely conditioned by that part of the cosmic Beings which has become earthly. Through those heavenly forces alone, which have become earthly, rock and stone shoot forth out of the Nether world. The animal kingdom, on the other hand, has not assumed the forces of the earthly depths. It comes into being through those world-forces alone which are at work from the surroundings of the Earth. It owes its growth, development and surging life, its powers of nutrition, its possibilities of movement, to the Sun-forces streaming down to the Earth. And under the influence of the Moon-forces streaming down to the Earth it has the power to reproduce itself It appears in manifold forms and species because the starry constellations are working in manifold ways from the Cosmos, shaping and moulding this animal life. The animals are, as it were, only placed down here on Earth from out the Cosmos. It is only with their dim life of consciousness that they partake in the earthly realm; with their origin, development and growth, with all that they are in order to be able to perceive and move about, they are no earthly creatures.

[ 15 ] This mightily conceived idea of the evolution of the Earth lived once upon a time in mankind. The greatness of the conception is scarcely recognisable any longer in the relics of it which came down to the Middle Ages. To attain this knowledge one must go back, with the true vision of the seer, into very ancient times. For even the physical documents that are extant do not reveal what was really present there in the souls of men, save to those who are able to penetrate to it by a spiritual path.

[ 16 ] Now man is not in a position to hold himself so much aloof from the Earth as do the animals. In saying this, we are approaching the Mystery of Humanity as well as the Mystery of the Animal Kingdom. These Mysteries were reflected in the animal cults of the ancient peoples, and above all in that of the Egyptians. They saw the animals as beings who are but guests upon the Earth, and in whom one may perceive the nature and activity of the spiritual world immediately adjoining this earthly realm. And when in pictures they portrayed the human figure in connection with the animal, they were representing to themselves the forms of those elementary, intermediate beings who, though they are indeed in cosmic evolution on the way to humanity, yet purposely refrain from entering the earthly realm, in order not to become human. For there are such elementary, intermediate beings and in picturing them the Egyptians were but reproducing what they saw. Such beings, however, have not the full self-consciousness of man, to attain to which man had to enter this earthly world so completely as to receive something of this earthly nature into his very own.

[ 17 ] Man had to be exposed to the fact that in this earthly world, though the work of the Divine-Spiritual Beings with whom he is connected is indeed present here, yet it is only their accomplished work. And just because only the accomplished work, severed from its Divine origin, is present here, therefore the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings have access to it. Thus it becomes necessary for man to make this realm of the Divine-accomplished work, permeated as it is by Lucifer and Ahriman, the field of action for one part—namely, the earthly part—of his life's development.

[ 18 ] So long as man had not progressed to the unfolding of his Intellectual or Mind-Soul, this was possible, without man's nature becoming permanently severed from its original Divine-Spiritual foundation. But when this point was reached, a corruption took place in man—a corruption of the physical, the etheric and the astral bodies. To an ancient science, this corruption was known as something that was living in man's nature. It was known as a thing that was necessary in order that consciousness might advance to self-consciousness in man. In the stream of knowledge that was cultivated in the centres of learning founded by Alexander the Great, there lived an Aristotelianism which, rightly understood, contained this ‘corruption’ as an essential element in its psychology. It was only in a later time that these ideas were no longer penetrated in their inward essence.

[ 19 ] In the ages before the evolution of his Intellectual or Mind Soul, man was, however, interwoven still with the forces of his Divine-Spiritual origin, so much so that from their cosmic field of action these forces were able to balance and hold in check the Luciferic and Ahrimanic Powers that reach out to man on Earth. And from the human side enough was done by way of co-operation to maintain the balance, in those actions of Ritual and of the Mysteries, wherein the picture was unfolded of the Divine-Spiritual Being diving down into the realm of Lucifer and Ahriman and coming forth again triumphant. Hence in times prior to the Mystery of Golgotha we find in the religious rites of different peoples pictorial representations of that which afterwards, in the Mystery of Golgotha, became reality.

[ 20 ] When the Intellectual or Mind-Soul was unfolded, it was through the reality alone that man could continue to be preserved from being severed from the Divine-Spiritual Beings who belonged to him. The Divine had to enter inwardly as Being, even in the earthly life, into the Organisation of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul which, during earthly existence, has its life from what is earthly. This took place through the Divine-Spiritual Logos, Christ, uniting His cosmic destiny with the Earth for the sake of mankind.

[ 21 ] Persephone came down to the Earth in order to save the plant kingdom from being obliged to form itself from what belongs only to Earth. That is the descent of a Divine Spiritual Being into the Nature of the Earth. Persephone, too, has a kind of ‘resurrection.’ but this takes place annually, in rhythmical succession.

[ 22 ] Over against this event—which is also a cosmic event occurring on the Earth—we have for Humanity the descent of the Logos. Persephone descends to bring Nature into its original direction. In this case there must be rhythm at the foundation; for the events in Nature take place rhythmically. The Logos descends into humanity. This occurs once during human evolution. For the evolution of humanity is but one part in a gigantic cosmic rhythm, in which, before the stage of man's existence, humanity was something altogether different, and in which, after this stage is passed, it will be something altogether different again; whereas the plant life repeats itself as such in shorter rhythms.

[ 23 ] From the age of the Spiritual Soul onwards it is necessary for humanity to see the Mystery of Golgotha in this light. For already in the age of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul there would have been a danger of man being separated, if the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place. In the age of the Spiritual Soul a complete darkening of the Spirit-world would needs come about for human consciousness, if the Spiritual Soul could not strengthen itself sufficiently to look back in inward vision to its Divine-Spiritual origin. If, however, it is able to do this, it finds the cosmic Logos, as the Being Who can lead it back. It fills itself with the mighty picture which reveals what took place on Golgotha.

[ 24 ] The beginning of this understanding is the loving comprehension of the cosmic Christmas, the cosmic Initiation-Night, the festive remembrance of which is celebrated each year. For the Spiritual Soul, which first receives the element of Intellectuality, is strengthened by allowing true love to enter into this, the coldest element of soul. And the warmth of true love is there in its highest form when it goes out to the Jesus child who appears on Earth during the cosmic Initiation-Night. In this way man has allowed the highest earthly Spirit-fact, which was at the same time a physical event, to work upon his soul; he has entered upon the path by which he receives Christ into himself.

[ 25 ] Nature must be recognised in such a way that in Persephone—or the Being who was still seen in the early Middle Ages when they spoke of ‘Nature’—it reveals the Divine Spiritual, original and eternal Force out of which it originated and continually originates, as the foundation of earthly human existence.

[ 26 ] The world of Man must be so recognised that in Christ it reveals the original and eternal Logos who works for the unfolding of the Spirit-being of man in the sphere of the Divine Spiritual Being bound up with man from the Beginning.

[ 27 ] To turn the human heart in love to these great cosmic facts: this is the true content of the festival of remembrance which approaches man each year when he contemplates the cosmic Initiation-Night of Christmas. If love such as this lives in human hearts, it permeates the cold light-element of the Spiritual Soul with warmth. Were the Spiritual Soul obliged to remain without such permeation, man would never become filled with the Spirit. He would die in the cold of the intellectual consciousness; or he would have to remain in a mental life that did not progress to the unfolding of the conscious Spiritual Soul. He would then come to a stop with the unfolding of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul.

[ 28 ] But in its essential nature the Spiritual Soul is not cold. It seems to be so only at the commencement of its unfolding, because at that stage it can only reveal the light-element in its nature, and not as yet the cosmic warmth in which it has indeed its origin.

[ 29 ] To feel and experience Christmas in this way will enable the soul to realise how the glory of the Divine-Spiritual Beings, whose images are revealed in the Stars, announces itself to man, and how man's liberation takes place, within the precincts of the Earth, from the Powers which wish to alienate him from his origin.

(Christmas, 1924)

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society (in connection with the foregoing Christmas Study)

[ 30 ] 137. The activity in the evolution of the World and Mankind which comes about through the forces of Michael, repeats itself rhythmically, though in ever-changing and progressing forms, before the Mystery of Golgotha and after.

[ 31 ] 138. The Mystery of Golgotha is the greatest event, occurring once and for all in the evolution of mankind. Here there can be no question of a rhythmic repetition. For while the evolution of mankind also stands within a mighty cosmic rhythm, still it is one—one vast member in a cosmic rhythm. Before it became this One, mankind was something altogether different from mankind; afterwards it will again be altogether different. Thus there are many Michael events in the evolution of mankind, but there is only one event of Golgotha.

[ 32 ] 139. In the quick rhythmic repetition of the seasons of the year, the Divine-Spiritual Being which descended into the depths of Earth to permeate Nature's process with the Spirit, accomplishes this process. It is the ensouling of Nature with the Forces of the Beginning and of Eternity which must remain at work; even as Christ's descent is the ensouling of Mankind with the Logos of the Beginning and of Eternity, whose working for the salvation of mankind shall never cease.

The Temple of the Sun. Hidden site of the mysteries of the Hierophants.

Capesius and Strader appear as in Scene 4.

Retardus (to Capesius and Strader before him):
Ye have brought bitter grief to me, my friends.
The office which I did entrust to you
Ye have administered with ill success.
I call you now before my judgment seat.
To thee, Capesius, I did entrust
Full measure of the spirit, that ideas
Of mankind's upward striving might compose,
With graceful words, the content of thy speech,
Which should have worked convincingly on man.
Then thine activity I did direct
Into those gatherings of men, wherein
Thou didst Johannes and Maria meet.
Their tendency towards the spirit-sight
Thou shouldst have superseded by the power
Which thy words should have exercised on them.
Instead of that thou didst thyself give up
Unto the influence which flows from them.—
And to thee, Strader, did I show the way
That leads to scientific certainty.
Thou hadst by rigid thinking to destroy
The magic power that comes from spirit-sight.
But yet thou lackedst feeling's certain touch.
The power of thought did slip away from thee,
When opportunity for conquest came.
My fate is close-entwined with your deeds,
Through you are these two seekers after truth
Now lost for evermore from my domain;
For to the Brethren I must give their souls.

Capesius:
Thy trusty messenger I could not be.
Thou gav'st me power to picture human life;
And I could well portray whate'er inspired
The souls of men at this time or at that:
But yet it was impossible for me
To gift my words, which painted but the past,
With power to fill and satisfy men's souls.

Strader:
The weakness which must needs befall me too
Was but a true reflection of thine own.
Knowledge indeed thou couldest give to me:
But not the power to still that yearning voice,
Which strives for truth in every human heart.
Deep in mine inmost soul I none the less
Felt other powers continually arise.

Retardus:
See now then what result your weakness brings.
The Brethren are approaching with those souls
In whom they will o'erthrow my power. E'en now
Johannes and Maria feel their might.

(Enter Benedictus with Lucifer and Ahriman; behind them Johannes and Maria.)

Benedictus (to Lucifer):
Johannes' and Maria's souls have now
No longer room for blind unseeing power:
To spirit-life they have been lifted up.

Lucifer:
Then must I straightway from their souls depart.
The wisdom unto which they have attained,
Doth give them power to see me, and my sway
O'er souls of men doth only last so long
As I remain invisible to them.
Yet doth the power continue which hath been
From the creation of the worlds mine own.
Now that I can no longer tempt their souls,
My power will cause within their spirit-life
Most beauteous fruits to ripen and endure.

Benedictus (to Ahriman):
Johannes' and Maria's souls have now
Destroyed all error's darkness in themselves;
And spirit-sight hath been revealed to them.

Ahriman:
I must indeed renounce their spirits then:
For they will turn henceforth unto the light.
Yet one thing hath not yet been ta'en from me;
With sense-appearance to delight their souls.
And though no longer they will deem it truth,
Yet will they see how truth it doth reveal.
(Enter the Other Maria.)

Theodosius (to the Other Maria):
Close intertwined was thy destiny
With thine exalted sister's loftier life:
The light of love I could impart to her:
But not the warmth of love, so long as thou
Didst only let thy noble gift arise
From the dim feeling life within thy soul,
And didst not strive to see it clear and bold
In the full light of wisdom's certainty.
The influence of the Temple does not reach
Unto the nature of vague impulses,
E'en though such impulse wills to work for good.

The Other Maria:
I must admit a noble gift of love
Can only work salvation in the light.
So to the temple I now wend my way.
Mine inner feeling shall in future times
Not rob the light of love of its results.

Theodosius:
Through this, thine insight, thou dost give me power
To make Maria's soul-light on the earth
Run smooth and evenly upon its path:
For aye aforetime it must lose its might
In souls, such as thine own was heretofore,
Which would not unify their love with light.

Johannes (to the Other Maria):
I see in thee that nature of the soul,
Which also holdest sway within mine own.
I was unable to find out the way
Which led to thine exalted sister's soul
So long as in my heart the warmth of love
From love's light ever held itself apart.
The sacrifice which to the temple's shrine
Thou bring'st, shall be repeated in my soul.
Therein the warmth of love shall sacrifice
Itself unto love's wonder-working light.

Maria:
Johannes, in the realm of spirit-life
Thou hast attained to knowledge through myself.
To spirit knowledge thou canst only add
True soul-existence, when thou findest too
Thine own soul, as thou didst find mine before.
(Enter Philia, Astrid, and Luna.)

Philia:
Then from the whole creation of the worlds
The joy of souls shall be revealed to thee.

Astrid:
From thine whole being then can be outpoured
The light and radiance of the warmth of souls.

Luna:
Then shalt thou dare to live out thine own self,
When such light can illuminate thy soul.
(Enter Felix and Felicia Balde.)

Romanus (to Felix Balde):
Long hast thou from the temple held thyself.
Thou only wouldst admit enlightenment,
When light from thine own soul revealed itself.
Men of thy nature rob me of the power
To give my light unto men's souls on earth.
They will but draw from unillumined deeps
The gifts they have to offer in their life.

Felix Balde:
But now at length 'twas even man's illusion
That urged me on from the dark deeps to light,
And let me to the temple find my way.

Romanus:
The fact that thou hast hither found thy way
Gives me the power to give light to the will
Of both Johannes and Maria here.
That it no more may follow forces blind,
But from world-aims henceforth direct itself.

Maria:
Johannes, thou hast seen thine own self now
In spirit in myself. Thou shalt live out
Thine own existence as a spirit, when
The world's light can behold itself in thee.

Johannes (to Felix Balde):
In thee, good brother Felix, I behold
The force of soul which in my spirit too
Hath held the will fast bound. This temple's light
Thou hast at length been ready to approach;
So will I guide my spirit's strength of will
Straight forward to the temple of the soul.

Retardus:
Johannes' and Maria's souls e'en now
Escape from my domain: how then shall they
Discover all that springs forth from my might?
So long as they did lack within their souls
The fundaments of knowledge they did still
Find joy and pleasure in my gifts, but now
I see myself compelled to let them go.

Felicia:
That man without thine aid may fire himself
To rational thought, that have I shown to thee:
From me a learning streams that shall bear fruit.

Johannes:
This learning shall be wedded to the light,
Which from this temple's source can fill men's souls.

Retardus:
Capesius, my son, thou art now lost.
Thou hast withdrawn thyself from my domain
Before the temple's light can shine for thee.

Benedictus:
He hath begun the path. He feels the light.
And he will win the strength to search and know
In his own soul all that, which up till now
Good Dame Felicia hath produced for him.

Strader:
Then I alone seem lost, for of myself
I cannot cast all doubts from out my heart;
And surely I shall never find again
The way that doth unto the temple lead.

Theodora:
From out thine heart a glow of light spreads forth;
A human image is now born therefrom;
And I can hear the words, which do proceed
From this same human form. E'en thus they sound:
‘I have achieved the power to reach the light.’
My friend, trust thou thyself! These very words,
When thy time is fulfilled, thyself shalt speak.

Today I want to bring you something about the transformations around the concept of the Christ from various viewpoints but set in a specific period of time. In a certain sense one can speak about the influence of the Mystery of Golgotha in every cultural sphere and in order to elucidate the correct idea of its influence on the earth's evolution it is necessary, where possible, to examine this impact independently from each cultural area.

Within the evolution of art, it is possible to speak about the important changes brought about as a result of the impact of the Mystery of Golgotha in the general progress of humanity. However, these thoughts will not suffice without the awareness which link to, I might call it, intimate artistic changes in the evolution of individual arts.

When we start looking for the starting point of when people in Europe depicted the Christ figure, it is repeatedly shown that the attempt to depict the Christ figure artistically actually only started from the moment when, within historical development, the concept of the Gospels as a literal perception of Christianity experienced a conclusion to a certain extent, a view of the Mass and Gospel traditions through participation in the church thus rejecting some declarations considered questionable at the time. When the foundation of Gospel literature was completed and also the transition was made to a certain degree in the minds of those looking at the content of the Gospels, a desire started in the West to artistically depict scenes and figures found in the Gospels.

This should not be lost sight of. Before the Gospels were concluded and rounded off in the minds of those calling themselves Christians, they limited their imagination to a depiction as a signature which you can see in this slide of the monogram of Christ:

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710 Christ monogram

See in the centre the Χ and the Ρ, ie. Chi and Rho, which is simultaneously the angled Cross with the Rho.

Or you see it in a similar form, as you see here:

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712 Christ monogram

... or combined with animal figures:

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713 Christ monogram with two doves.

... or the changed form, as we have here:

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711 Christ monogram:

This is what people limited themselves to during that time, during which the mass of the Gospels became unified and gradually penetrated people's minds. This is the reason why actual pictorial representation of the holy history can only be spoken of as originating from the 2nd or 3rd centuries onwards.

In the course of our local art observations which I have emphasized I want to point out another relationship today by referring to what I've highlighted before. I have stressed that the first representations which were created still obeyed the forms of the old, ancient pagan artistic development.

People simply transposed the pagan artistic expression on to the content of the Christian development. This is very important. One can say that before and up to the 3rd Century nothing had been done in the western cultural development to depict images of the Gospel scenes as such, which had not come as a transfer from pagan art. Here we find figures which we connect to Christian representation as similarly depicted to what we usually see in pagan myths. Today we want to limit our observations to the Christ figure Himself. In this regard we find at the start of the first times the Christ is represented, most frequently of all, the image of the Good Shepherd, in the most varied forms in antiquity, presented in the pre-Christian times. This image—chosen from one out of many representations of “The Good Shepherd”:

714 Mosaic of the Good Shepherd, Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Ravenna ...

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... reminds us of the depiction of David amongst the animals. It reminds us of other Greek images.

If we limit ourselves in particular to the Christ figure in this image, as it still stands, you see an absolutely antique expression. We notice the endeavour in this pictorial representation towards the expression of a mild, noble face, generally found in these olden times, beardless, still with tousled hair, youthful, gracious. These were the endeavours which live in all these images. We already see in this representation of the Christ imagery the pagan imagery imposed on it as the basis because in such images everything is still pagan. Now a question about such a statement is created: what precisely characterizes the paganism in this imagery—I'm speaking from an artistic point of view. So much has been written and spoken about art but the essential vigour, if I may call it that, of the pagan artistic expression has not been stressed. When you—as much as it is possible from what is still available—study Greek imagery you will very gradually find the fact that this Greek imagery, studied realistically in the sense we speak of realism today, did not exist. The forms of the human body were not presented by the Greeks as a direct likeness of a portrait of some model, corresponding in any way at all as a mere copy of the human body as it walks the earth because the Greek simply had an ideal body in mind. This ideal body they had in mind, actually incorporated something quite different from what human eyes could actually see in a model. In order to really understand the most important Greek bodily depictions, the artistic physical forms, one has to refrain from considering what the eyes see in the model and its form; one should remember what I already mentioned in previous years: the Greek depiction is according to the inner feelings experienced within the body. A muscle wasn't merely a direct rendering according to what the eye saw but how it was being experienced, how with inner feeling it cooperated with movement, streamlined with muscle contraction. The rendering in artistic matter carried a feeling which was being experienced within the physical itself.

What single factor made this possible? Indeed, it was only possible as a result of the Greek artist, when connecting his thoughts to the physical nature of a person in the majority of his creative images, he relinquished the individual nature of the person. He refrained from including it. When he looked, he saw only the physical expressed in the human form. Pay attention—he looked at the physical nature of mankind as if it represented the outcome of the entire cosmos, as a total spiritual depiction of the cosmos. When you look at a Zeus figure, at a Pallas Athena figure, an Apollo, an Aphrodite figure, you find the soul within it. However, these souls which are within these physical forms are not individual human souls but they are souls that live as results of the entire cosmos: world souls in a human physical form. One could say that what the Greeks searched for as souls in this realm they saw as absolutely beyond the idea that the human is a result of the universe, but that through their thinking they considered the forces cooperating in the universe as striving to produce the crowning glory of its creative forces, the crown of its creative power as a product resulting in the human organism. How focussed and concentrated the creative cosmic forces were, to bring the human form into existence! In such Greek human organisms are the forms I have been telling you about, and here we also find the concentrated expression as seen in laws creating the entire culture, and also through which the entire Spiritual All rules: the creativity of the cosmos condensed in the human being.

One could say the Greeks configured the body in this way. Indeed it seems extraordinary but much more correct if one thinks of what I want to say now. One imagines that when people are asleep, the soul, therefore the `I' and the astral body are outside the physical body and that the sleeping body is ensouled by universal spirituality, absorbed by this spirituality which belongs to the cosmos and through the spiritual aspect being driven out of the human body it has the result of enabling the individual spirituality during earth evolution to enter into humanity and thus one acquires the Greek inspired shaping of human form in such figures, as I have indicated to you. Not that the Greek had no understanding of individual spirituality but he saw the individual soul qualities as not yet penetrating the human form; the human form was for him still something universal. So it happens, which is extraordinary enough, that the individual soul aspect, the specific human soul aspect in Greek art only appears when the Greek does not represent forms which in Greek art, in their higher development, are regarded as typical. When the Greek presents an Apollo or a Zeus, Pallas Athena or Hera or Aphrodite then something typical is presented; when these are not presented, when Satyr or Faun is depicted, then what is presented is pertaining to the individual human aspect, applicable to every soul which is present when it is awake and which leaves the body when it is asleep.

You see this is the curious thing in pagan art development in its highest configuration in Greece. Specific human soul qualities had not penetrated the art forms when the ideal-type aspects were adopted. By contrast all that was working in the soul, the emotions and impulses permeating the soul with the preference of the Satyr and Faun figures, one could say these reminded one of animals. When the Greek presented the god Apoll, then in the god Apoll lived a super human, a super individual soul as an artistic figure of Apollo. Swinging over to the humanistic we first find, in the Greek depiction of a Mercury-type, the Hermes-type. We can find many—you can study the Hermes-type - inspired by the Faun- and Satyr-type. One could say it was the conviction of Greek art that the human soul had not come sufficiently far in its development that it had its own powers to express itself in the human form, when this human form wanted to come out in its full glory.

If we now go even further back in Greek art history we encounter the oriental art form, to discover the total universal cosmic coming into expression. Thus Greek art was the final flowering of universal cosmic expression, the representation having been attempted in the physical human form. It is extremely important that this is looked at.

One can now say that as the Christ became the redeemer in relation to the rest of the powers of evolution in humanity, so He also became the redeemer in relation to this view of art. Imagine an elevated mind posing a question such as this: how can one idealize a representation in order to reach an expression in contemporary art, an expression of something spiritual, something human, how can one idealize something which earlier was merely represented by using the mentioned deviation of an ideal type, namely a Faun-type, a Satyr-type and so on? How can the problem be solved in connection with the specific human form, how can something be idealised which in ancient times did not want to be idealised but that the divine humanistic be kept in contrast to the all-too-human aspect? This question was never stated on the physical plane yet it is answered in the further development of art. It is basically also being answered in the history of humanity.

It will always be part of extraordinary interesting facts that one man in Greece, who so deeply descended into the Greek life that he through his own destiny, to a certain extent, he prepared the redeemer destiny—Socrates traditionally didn't represent and ideal type of Hellenism but more something of a Satyr or Faun.

It is as if world history itself wanted to create the specific human out of the subhuman.

715 Greek sculpture, 4BC, Socrates, scale down copy (London, British Museum)

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Here we see in the continued progress in the shaping of something which had not been achieved in the ideal humanistic form in Greek counter art, in the Satyr- and Faun art, by wanting to achieve a breakthrough as a human form only originating from the cosmos.

The individually human conforms according to spiritual lines and forms obtained only from the cosmos. Oriental forms we must always look for in the cosmic, but western form in the individually human.

So we see, the moment humanity wanted to conquer the pagan, just then the Christ-type entered in order to penetrate the specifically human into the commonly typically cosmic element. Just observe how that penetrates the typical ...

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715 Socrates (London, British Museum)

Here we have a

716 Catacomb painting of a Christ depiction (Rome, catacomb of Pontianus)

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...out of a somewhat later time of ancient Christian art, complete with an added beard, while many Christ representations in the first centuries were beardless. We see how there is a continual attempt to not only make the cosmic aspect in the figure a reality, but to show how the cosmic element is at war with the individuality, how the one is working against the other. The cosmic element here still carries more weight, but actually it outweighs only as tradition. What had to be overcome in the oriental-Hellenistic still carried the most weight, and would still outweigh it for a long time. Only gradually the penetration of the specific enters as the individually human element into the form. So we see how gradually this happens.

I have to show you the next image as a result:

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717 Catacomb painting of Christ amidst his apostles.

Here you see—it belongs to the first centuries—how the endeavour existed to maintain the whole arrangement of lines originating from the cosmos, and so on, but as something entering which is specifically human. As a result of this the strange battle started which had particular importance during these ancient centuries, the old battle of how Christ had to be represented; should He correspond more to the Apollo beauty or should He be represented as an individual human soul? The endeavour was to represent Him as an individual man with a soul. Now here is actually the peculiar thing, you see. Here one accomplishes one of those reversals, as we have encountered in other areas during the last days: to represent the human individualism, simply by pulling up again what earlier had been frowned upon. This was developing in the highest degree within Greek trends while in the west, in Latin circles, the continuation was being developed of something which once had been quite oriental—to depict a certain cosmic figure. This was in a time when the unfolding of art in the west dwindled and one could not be sure about the correct explanation any more.

Thus it happened that the depiction of the Christ-form itself triumphed for the eastern, the oriental and Byzantine type of depiction, while the Christ individuality was not included. However, while artistic evolution was on a downwards path one can say that this type degenerated, He no longer retained the lofty dignity which the East wanted to give Him but He was depicted as becoming, one could say, the downward trend of humanity. He became the kind of representation of humanity's characteristics which enter in a degenerative way. His hair was parted, his beard took on particular forms, his expression became such that people saw: the superhuman-cosmic was now being conquered by the human aspect. However people were not yet in the position to really depict this human element as a kind of ideal-type.

We see this exactly when we allow further Christ images to work on us, for example even this very beautiful mosaic in Ravenna:

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718 Mosaic: “Christ with Archangels crowning the Holy Vitalis” (San Vitale in Ravenna) in which we find neither great beauty, nor a cosmic-universal image, but in which we can already see that an attempt was being made to bring in the human element.

Even more clearly we can be impressed by the expressive images in the mosaic of Palermo—the Monreale Dom, in the apse:

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719: Mosaic, 12th Century, Christ, and below Him, Our Lady with the Child.

This is an image which evokes the most immensely impressive thoughts through its wonderful craft of mosaic. However, precisely within these images we see the battle of both streams which we have been speaking about. Exactly as a result of this battle, this image is one of the most interesting regarding what we have ahead.

All of this belongs to the general course of humanity's evolution. We see how in a loop line the individual jumps over the abstract cosmic aspect coming from the East, and lets it go over to the West. I say: the abstracted cosmic element transported over to the West! If you want to understand that then you must above all completely enter into the art of being, into a soul nature which was found in Romanism. Imagine how this Romanism worked. You must free yourself from everything which educated people are so inoculated with today because Romanism has conquered the schools; our entire education is Roman based. However we must not forget the actual content of Romanism when we look at the first blossoming which drew its content for two centuries from Greece, right up the blossoming of Romanism under the Julian Empire. Roughly 150 to 200 years before the Mystery of Golgotha and somewhat later se see how Greek imagery, how Greek culture was conquered by fantasy-deprived Romanism, how this fantasy-less Romanism took over Greek content.

Rome became ever bigger in precisely this peculiar insult of which I have spoken, the transference of abstracted cosmic elements on human affairs. In Rome originated that distinctive talent to launch world domination, the talent for world domination which in ancient times—while the slandering they were initiating had not yet happened, or taken over—the peculiarity was the great oriental empire of the 3rd post-Atlantean cultural epoch—that went over to Romanism. World domination was actually the Roman Empire's ideal. To bring the then total cultural world under Roman rule was the Roman Kaiser's ideal. The content from Hellenism to Romanism was prescribed by the desire to represent the individual. Indeed, one finds in Romanism this Greek yearning to represent individualism, even as ugliness, thus letting Latinism conquer the Greek type. Initially there was resistance to do this because the former desire was for the beautiful type and because of this at first it didn't strike them as beautiful but as ugly. It reminds us of the Latin old Faun- and Satyr-types, which are elevated as the highest human quality. Gradually within the Greek being itself came the cosmic Zeus type, the Apollo, the Pallas Athena, Aphrodite in a state of decadence; out of this came something which had formerly only lived in the area of ugliness and now was being striven for in idolised moral beauty.

From the West, in Romanism, quite a different Christ-type was depicted, it was actually depicted as a consequence of the pagan Apollo-type and this is due to the background of Italian humanity in that century and their sculptural inventions because they didn't have an inventiveness of their own, in fact had none at all, because Romanism in essence was without imagination.

We can now continue. You see, we then find fallow centuries, tendencies towards Hellenism but simultaneously decay in Romanism. A time of hope only started in the time Augustine appeared, but now from Greece conquering Christianity. The same thing appears again: Romanism prepares to snatch spiritual world domination, but suitably turns to the begotten content of Greece. The same phenomenon again.

During this period Hieronymus translated the Bible into Latin. Throughout the following centuries everything developed out of Rome, the striving was to make Rome the earthly human central point of world order. In order to inculcate the cosmic element into this social structure of the world it was turned completely abstract; this was the prevailing teaching. Art—in as far as one can speak of art in this way—was on a parallel path up to the 13th Century with suggestions coming time and again from the East, building up whatever wanted to be developed. So we see the then completed period in art form of the image of Christ Jesus Himself brought nothing new because the Greek-Oriental type was transported over to the West. This is essentially what can be seen as expressed by Cimabue.

Now we want again to hold on to the 13th Century form which the Christ-type had taken on:

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720a-7 Christ on the Cross by Cimabue.

Here with Cimabue we see something, one might say, which has been flowing into souls during all the previous centuries. You see what lives here which came over from the Orient into Hellenism. We see in the image how earth and heaven are linked, how heaven is as active in its essence as the earth too, is active. Even in the depiction of the crucified Christ we can observe the two streams weaving through one another, as I have been speaking about.

Within the world of art itself artistic creativity could not exist, while positive suggestions towards imagination was still being received out of the East.

The next image I want to show is done by Giotto:

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720b-36 Giotto (?) The Crucifixion, Assisi, San Francesco

You nearly see this Giotto painting developing out of the earlier one (720a-7). You can still see the heaven activated by its beings. Still, the complete descent created out of the universality of the world has not taken place and entered into the earthly world. We already see the earthly, which still quite bashfully and shamelessly throbs in the Satyr- and Faun-types, we see rising here, their control spreading, idealizing, enforcing the human being, because what wanted to be expressed here could only show itself when it was permeated by Christ, through and through.

Three things can be distinguished. Firstly those forms which exist in every cosmic soul are found in ancient art. You find then the battle of the human soul in the first depictions of Christian art. We are still in the kind of a battle as we have before us here. The cosmic element is still everywhere—I mean the spiritual cosmic, not the Copernican materialistic cosmic, but the spiritual cosmic—sparkling everywhere, yet at the same time from below the specific human soul is striving to take on the form which the soul gives to the body, wanting it to be revealed. This was the second element I want to present to you where the two battle with one another, where the human-soul opposes the cosmic-soul element. Perhaps this battle is most intensively depicted by Giotto compared to other artists. For this reason it is interesting that this particular battle can always be studied in a Giotto. Giotto strives from this one side quite significantly back to this model. He has a strong naturalistic vein yet in him remains the non-specific, one might say forms originating out of the spiritual world which were not yet so completely mastered by Cimabue. In the following image you see another “crucifixion” of Giotto:

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721a-35 Giotto: Crucifixion (Padua, Arena-Chapel)

The previous painting was not even a real Giotto, perhaps originating from someone else. Here we see Giotto in the most genuine sense. See how the heaven is not only implicated but definitely contributes to the image. Notice something entering here, also with the Redeemer's form—and this is our main focus today—something depicting the soul wretchedness in the way the bodies are constituted. Here we already see the human aspect coming in, which one never could see in an Apollo form.

I ask you now to not consider the fact I'm about to reveal as inappropriate. What I want to say, I say reluctantly now and I hope that you will be mistaken if you want to believe the facts are inappropriate. Research orientated at truth results in something extraordinary. When we delve into an image such as this one by Giotto, we see a new element surface in the old tradition, a Greek orientated idealization which could only appear in the Faun and Satyr, a super-imposed idealisation of the human if we look at a Giotto, and then we may essentially put Giotto as an opponent to his master, Cimabue, who was fructified from the Orient. How does something new happen to be introduced here?—Now we arrive at something which is difficult to say: it spread out from an external point, outer territories of Europe which actually had their origin in Central Europe itself, which we have often seen originating from Central Europe: the very new impulse to configure the individual human element within the soul. Very little Roman blood flow for example in the present day Italians, really very little. A great deal has flowed in—refer to historical studies as far as ancient documents allow—much has flowed into Central European blood: from this comes fructification. The naturalistic, soul principle which lived in Giotto was created by the fructification through Romanism, the unimaginative Romanism plus this emanation from Central Europe. Romanism was actually great only in ideas which pre-occupied themselves, the social structure in the sense of abstract cosmology; what one regards as “State” is really a speciality product of Romanism, originating out of the Roman soul. The state which wanted to spread out over everything is a copy of what sprung in the Roman head where it originated.

We now go to the next image, another Giotto:

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721b-32 Giotto: Christ on the throne (Rome, St Peters)

Here we see a Christ. I have chosen this image because here Giotto was most inspired to represent the old type of depiction as it came from the East. Only, look at the face, how much individuality he has brought into it! Look at each of these fingers lifted in the right hand, how many individual soul qualities have been brought into it, how in the best sense the spiritual-naturalistic lives in it! Here one gradually enters into the southern art in which the oriental essence is linked, with the cosmic-oriental essence; here enters something we have seen in images of Central Europe, something in its purity, without the cosmological essence, merely out of the human soul itself.

The next image is once again a Giotto:

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722a-21 Giotto: The Baptism of Christ. (Padua., Arena Chapel)

Here too you see heaven and earth play into it. Now just look at the Christ figure itself and you will find how Giotto made the effort to allow the soul quality of the divine form to come to expression, not only in the face but in the entire figure, in the main bearing and hand gestures.

Here we have another Giotto, the evening meal:

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722b-34 Giotto: Evening meal (Padua, Arena Chapel)

You see Christ on the left side partly coming to expression as the Greek Christ-type yet the effort to express the individuality of soul is also being made. Everywhere this insertion is apparent and so we see this extraordinary thing streaming forth which in the highest sense is artistic, oriental and still in the old Persian cultural impulse dependant on Central Europe, one could say, having a rendezvous with the inartistic, assessed purely on a State structured unimaginative basis.

Another Giotto:

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723a-40 Giotto: Journey into Jerusalem (Padua, Arena Chapel)

... which I have chosen again to present the same phenomenon to you. Just by taking these images of Christ in various biblical scenes does one see how Giotto endeavours to bring the individual expression into the soul nature.

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723b-33 Giotto: Crowned by Thorns (Padua, Arena chapel)

We want to bring these changes of the Christ depiction itself to you as it took place through these centuries.

Now think of the first tentative efforts we found in the ancient Christian art. Certainly a great deal depends on the material, but that materials were applied, that it was particularly used for these ideas, that is the important aspect which we see here. Now:

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724a-31 Giotto: Resurrection (Padua, Arena Chapel)

Everywhere you'll find the confluence of both streams of which I have spoken, confirmed. Perhaps at the same time you'll notice the intensity which works further with the Greek Christ-ideal type, because in the background, one could say, in the sleeping powers of the artists it was present everywhere.

Now we come a little further. I have now chosen an image from the 14th century, by Orcagna depicting Christ as the World Ruler:

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725 Andrea Orcagna: the Youngest Court (Florence, St Mary, Novella)

It comes out of the church of Saint Mary Novalla in Florence. Here you clearly see the old type as an endeavour for a complete individualisation, the soul gently appearing.

With this we are already in the 14th century. The various developmental streams of human culture move at different speeds. Up to here we don't only see the influence of the Greek Christ type but we also see some of the inspirational powers found in oriental art. I would like to state a fact and not a criticism: in all these images it does not come to be expressed what the Roman worldwide church domination within its full historical rights had initiated itself since the 9th century. The Greek influence actually existed in art with little influence from central Europe.

Understand, this had to be so, from the second half of the 9th century it went well in Rome. Everyone knew, as I expressed it once, this `Eastern Being' had to be kept back. The western world had to be permeated with it out of the basis of the life of the folk striving towards something higher. Out of this we see a sentiment which I have characterised for you, which I identified with the liberated city culture, this free city culture which has its point of origin from central Europe and spread itself over various other territories. These free city cultures had the urge to express the specifically human soul element. Now in the 9th century Rome understood and thus considered this European impetus and carried it into account.

The specific western form of Catholicism which spread through the institutionalised world churches was by contrast being held back in the Orient, and this Catholicism came to a specific expression in those artists and their art as most wonderfully expressed by Fra Angelico:

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724b-65 Fra Angelico: Evening Meal.

Here firstly we see—when we have an understanding for such things—the western Catholic element poured out in art. The differences between the previous (725) and this image (274b-65) as well as the previous Evening Meal (722b-34) and this image (724b-65) are unbelievable, because in these images, as it lives in well loved art, the western catholic sentiment is alive. Look at the forms into which the sacrifice has been brought, woven equally into the composition as a reminder of the Last Supper before the event of Golgotha. You don't only see the Last Supper but you see the continuation of the evening meal within the composition of the catholic sacrifice. Catholic sentiment is poured out over the image of the evening meal and particularly over the figure of the Redeemer. Here, primarily, the Redeemer is shown as a model in art to western priests. In reality He had been there much earlier, in outer reality.

Thus we see the Roman world domination church spread its rule also over art in a totally decisive manner. In addition we can say Giotto created his artistic offering of Francis of Assisi out of a freed individual soul. Here we can see Fra Angelico who paints as well as Messe reads in San Marco in Florence. An aura of Catholicism permeates these images. He isn't an individual sacrifice, but paints the church with it.

No less you see this in the following image of

726a-64 Fra Angelico: Crucifixion

Catholicism paints into the art.

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I ask you please to look closely at the next image and see how the being of the Catholic art actually is alive in the Catholic organization, that even in world domination, one could say, the organisational power of the Catholic Church works right into the realm of supernatural beings.

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726b-68 Fra Angelico: World domination

We find this now increasing with another friar, of which I want to show you the following image:

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727 Friar Bartholemeo: Christ and the Four Evangelists

Here we see the third stage in this interesting process. Look at the interplay of a new freshness as a resurrection out of old Hellenism. This entered now again, the old Greek influence.

So we notice how for a long time the individualized soul concept of the Christ-type, which is of interest to us today, prevailed. Take the entire design as it evolved from the cosmic forces working from the beginning, which are then taken up as the individualised soul through the Greek impulses influencing it ever more, and how through this it became increasingly individualised. How was Christ individualised, my dear friends? Now we see how antiquity so recently intervened just a little but it is already in it. It is again working from the characteristic towards the typically-beautiful. This is notable as being continuous, because this is actually the secret of the Renaissance. These images I want to show you in conclusion are the starting point for the Renaissance artist, we see how the Renaissance artists completely renewed a rise in Hellenism but they didn't enter into that which conquered the form of an individual.

Here you have the Evening Meal of Andrea del Sarto which is in Florence.

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728 of Andrea del Sarto: Evening Meal.

Again there are beautiful forms, with still a touch of cosmic consciousness which the Greeks still had, something of the traditions of a cosmic element brought into the forms but purely out of tradition and no longer from direct observation, with direct feelings as found among the Greeks. We discover it here; this is brought further by Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. We see something developing here which is particular to Leonardo da Vinci, in this image of the baptism by Verrocchio, the teacher of Leonardo.

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729a-92 Verrocchio: Baptism of Christ

The same motive done by Masolino during the same time period:

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729b-50 Masolino: the Baptism of Christ

Yet again I want to include the image “The Baptism” by Giotto:

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722a-21 Giotto: the Baptism of Christ

Look at the Baptism where the battle is still on between the two principles, without the Greek influence, also without the antique Greek impact, without the impact from antiquity, to the new Greek, the Christian impact particularly strong.

Now we bring out the two other images:

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729a-92 Verrocchio: Baptism of Christ

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729b-50 Masolino: the Baptism of Christ

You see how the Renaissance works. Out of a Verrocchio comes a Leonardo; perhaps Leonardo even worked on these paintings too.

Now I would in closing still show 2 paintings, in which you would be able to see what came over from the North, from Central Europe and how all of this mixed into the others. We have a northern product here, the Man of Sorrows, by Dürer:

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730a-303 Dürer: Man of Sorrows

Here we have the endeavour without a cosmic aspect: the human Christ. Where Fra Angelico poured the Catholic aspects over his artistic creations, here we see the formation against world domination, here we see how the human individual wants to depict His Christ. Here a single human being worked on one image. While Fra Angelico painted in the San Marco Church in Florence, the whole Catholic sentiment painted with him. Here a single person worked on his biblical depiction. This became fixed in this particular time. Later the Renaissance came but moved South, mixing with other influences.

I still have another image which depicts a similar kind of thing:

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730b-311 Dürer: Christ on the Cross.

These things should show us how through the centuries the Christ image changed. I have demonstrated this with these two images from later centuries. I would like in the further progress of these ideas, if it is possible, to show you how these Christ images develop further. A world history can be written since the Mystery of Golgotha by simply describing the changes in the development of the Christ paintings and images. Everything which in reality contributed to it is expressed clearly. One could continue with this right up to the present.

Christ depictions are researched at the present time: years ago I saw a whole collection of Christ images in an exhibition, the one more hideous than the next! Today the attempt is to make reflections of present events thus reflecting the chaos leading up to events in which we live. If we try—without this tendency I've just spoken about in the creation of Christ figures—if we try to introduce what lies within this form in the spiritual world, shaped initially by our first efforts through painting, as good as it gets with limited material, then it does appear as a further progress on this cultural line of the realities of humanity's unfolding.

RUDOLF STEINER

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731 Painting (Plant colours) in the small cupola of the First Goetheanum, Dornach, detail with the central motif, with part of the architraves.

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732 Painting (Plant colours) in the small cupola of the First Goetheanum, Dornach, Central Motif: The Representative of Man between Lucifer and Ahriman.

732 Painting (Plant colours) in the small cupola of the First Goetheanum, Dornach, Central Motif: The Representative of Man between Lucifer and Ahriman.

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732 Painting (Plant colours) in the small cupola of the First Goetheanum, Dornach, Central Motif: The Representative of Man between Lucifer and Ahriman.

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734 Painting in the small cupola of the First Goetheanum, Dornach. Section: Bust of The Representative of Man.

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735 Visage of The Representative of Man, pencil sketch.

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736 Wood sculptural group: The Representative of Man between Lucifer and Ahriman.

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737 Wood sculptural group: Detail: The Representative of Man.

738 Maquette for the wood sculptural group, a Plaster of Paris cast.

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739 Wood sculptural group, detail: Head of The Representative of Man, side view.

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740 Wood sculptural group, detail: Head of The Representative of Man.

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741 Study of the head of The Representative of Man, plasticine.

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It is really good in the present time to fructify ourselves with such ideas which can be gained from cultural areas of art, and see a bit of the truth, because in the present time gods will be offered to mankind to be worshipped, while mankind will have no talent for seeing the truth.

In our time (1917) it is possible to say that four fifths of the world should ally itself against a fifth, in a time when so much indifference is accepted, it is time for recorded concepts to be taken out of the history of humanity's evolution and to revise them a little.

The lecture yesterday covered the steps up to the Lemurian epoch in the evolution of our earth. During that epoch a great cosmic event took place, namely, the exit of the moon from the substance of the earth. The direct result of this was that the right tempo was introduced into the evolution possible for man. In respect of form and temperature the earth at that time was essentially different from what it is today; its temperature was so much higher that contemporary man could not have lived upon it. Gradually the earth densified and solid substances were formed. When in the lecture yesterday it was said that bodies “hardened,” this is not to be understood in the physical sense but as meaning in respect of strength and quality. Certain substances dissolved. The whole earth was in a seething-fluidic state and it solidified only be degrees. But it must not be thought that this means hard and dense in the modern physical sense; it relates only to strength and quality. These forces would have mummified human beings. Out of the seething-fluidic state of the earth, formations resembling islands emerged and the beings living on them were slightly similar to our present animals and plants. During the first half of the Lemurian epoch, man himself did not live actually on the earth but in the sphere above the earth, in a fine, rarefied corporeality; his constitution was much more spiritual. At the beginning of the Lemurian epoch man had not, as yet, his later bodily nature, nor did he take the more solid kind of nourishment. Indeed, even at the end of the Lemurian epoch you would not have found even the densest forms of man's body equipped with bones such as exist today. The substance of man's physical body at that time was still flexible, gelatinous, hardly distinguishable outwardly from the surrounding sub-stance. The souls who had descended to the earth too soon drew this kind of densest substance into their bodies, with the result that then there were living on the earth men whose constitutions were least spiritual, while the others were still living above the earth.

It was only now, during the Lemurian epoch, through the ejection of fine ashes and fiery-fluidic metallic masses, that the first foundation of the mineral kingdom was laid. These masses formed the beginning, as it were, of islands. This is a more pictorial way of expressing it but that is how the process of gradual densification presents itself to clairvoyant sight. Out of these masses there emerged what we may call a plant kingdom and only later on the animal kingdom. It would lead too far if I were to attempt to tell you in detail how the physical world densified. Everything really descended out of higher spheres, including the continents as they densified. But the being who is man today still tarried, as it were, in a sphere above the earth. Men lived within this more ethereal sphere and there developed their finer bodies. The human etheric and astral bodies there were not yet connected strongly with the physical body but were freer from it. With the solidification of the physical body, which now became progressively denser, however, the connection with the etheric and astral bodies became closer. Instead of hovering and floating above the earth, man became a being who now trod the earth itself.

At this time an important influence asserted itself upon man. If there had been no such influence, what would have happened to him? For long, long ages he would have remained a being without initiative, without inner independence, an automaton, propelled by the forces of higher spiritual beings. Forces from the spiritual beings streamed perpetually into his physical, etheric and astral bodies. Among these beings there were some who worked chiefly upon his astral body and had themselves remained backward in their own evolution; these were the luciferic beings. They drew man down to the physical plane more quickly than the good, normally evolved spiritual beings had done.

The luciferic beings were spirits who ought in reality to have completed their task on Old Moon. Had they asserted their influence upon men then, they would have been able to work only upon the astral body for that was the highest member of man's constitution on Old Moon. They were, however, incapable of this because they were retarded beings. Nor could they affect the ego, because on Old Moon they had not known of its existence. The luciferic beings had eventually evolved to the stage of being able to work upon man's astral body, but man himself had meantime progressed and the ego had been membered into him. The luciferic beings could not yet have worked upon the ego; higher beings were doing so, and also upon the astral body, but only through and by way of the ego. These higher beings would not have allowed themselves to work directly upon the astral body, for that was a task they had already accomplished during the Old Moon period. If the luciferic beings had failed to have any influence upon man, the higher beings alone would have worked upon his astral body by way of the ego and so have purified the astral body. Instead of this, however, during the Lemurian epoch the luciferic beings worked directly upon man's astral body from every side and consequently the astral body was exposed to all the influences that should have been worked out on Old Moon. As a result there were implanted into man urges, desires and passions that would not have been his lot if the higher beings alone had worked upon him. The gods would not have allowed these influences to have access to him. The luciferic influence had a twofold effect upon man. Firstly, a certain enthusiasm, a certain zeal could be kindled in him to do one thing or another; but this zeal was not guided by his ego, not influenced by the higher beings working in him. Secondly, it was made possible for him to secede from the higher beings, to do evil, but also to have freedom. Thus, initiative, enthusiasm and freedom for man were due to the luciferic beings but the possibility of doing evil also existed. The luciferic beings insinuated themselves into man's astral body. Fundamentally speaking, this is still the case today; it is they who on the one side make man free and on the other entice him to evil.

Owing to the fact that man's astral body was permeated by the luciferic beings, he was led prematurely down to the earth from the atmosphere above it. For this the luciferic beings are essentially to blame. They were the cause of the deterioration and premature densification of man's astral body; otherwise, he would still have remained for a long time in the atmosphere. This, in the Bible, is called Paradise.

Thus, the expulsion from Paradise was due to the influence of the gods. You should therefore picture the earth in its seething fluid condition and man being led by the luciferic beings too soon down to the earth on which continents were forming. At that time man's astral body still had a far greater influence upon his environment, greater magical powers than were his later on; there was as yet no such drastic separation between the laws of nature and the will of man. In this connection an evil man today would be unable to cause any special damage to nature. He would be incapable of this. In that early period it was different. Evil lusts in the soul of man had a visible, magical effect in nature; they attracted the forces of fire above and on the earth. Through his evil lusts and magic will, man set the forces of nature ablaze. Today this is no longer possible, but at that time fire flashed through the air when men were evil.

Through the wickedness of masses of human beings and the fact that man succumbed too completely to the influence of the luciferic beings and lent himself to evil, the forces of fire in Lemuria were kindled. Thus, Lemuria perished as the result of the raging fires and the wickedness of a large section of its population. The human beings who were saved went to the West, to a continent lying between the present Africa, Europe and America, namely, Atlantis. There the evolution of humanity continued for long, long ages. The number of human beings gradually increased and the souls who had gone to Jupiter, Mars, and so on, during the period of desolation, came down to this continent. The process lasted for a long time. It was thus that the concept of race developed in ancient Atlantis. In occultism it is said that there were human beings in Atlantis whose bodies were inhabited by souls who had previously been on Mars, Jupiter, Venus, and so on. They were called Mars men, Jupiter men, for example. The external forms of the bodies differed for this reason. During the whole first half of Atlantis the texture of the human body was much softer, much more flexible, and yielded to the forces of the soul. These soul forces were essentially more powerful than they are today, and they both shaped and overpowered the physical body. A man of ancient Atlantis would have been able to break a railroad track, let us say, with ease, not because his physical forces were strong, for his bony system had still not developed, but through his magical, psychic forces. A cannon ball, for example, could have been repulsed by this psychic force. The density of flesh developed only later. A similar phenomenon is still to be found today in certain lunatics who on account of the liberation of strong psychic forces—in that condition the physical body is not properly connected with the higher bodies—can lift and throw heavy objects.

Because in Atlantis man's physical body was still pliable, he could more easily adjust himself to processes in the life of soul; the physical stature could be made to decrease or increase in size. If, for example, a man in Atlantis was, let: us say, stupid or sensual, he fell into matter, as it were, and became a giant in stature. The more intelligent human beings developed a delicate constitution and were smaller in stature; those who were dull-witted were giants. Man's external form was far, far more strongly influenced by the forces of soul than is the case today when substance has become rigid. The bodies of men developed in accordance with the qualities of soul, and this accounted for the great differences in the races.

When myths and legends have described the dwarfs as being clever and the giants as dull-witted, we recognize once again the reflection of a profound, occult trend. When a soul came down again to the earth from Mars, the qualities with which it had been connected there continued for a long time to influence it and the body it inhabited. This fact explains the differences in races and racial characteristics.

If the evolution of humanity until the middle of the Atlantean epoch had proceeded without the influence of Lucifer, man would by then have developed a picture consciousness imbued with a high degree of clairvoyance. There would have been in his soul something that through its power would have revealed the external world to him in inner pictures; he would not have perceived objects outside through his eyes. As a result of the luciferic influence man had perceived the physical world at an early stage, but not rightly. He saw the external world through a veil, as it were. Evolution as provided for him by the divine-spiritual beings was that in place of the dull, clairvoyant consciousness with which his inner world was perceived in pictures, he would have seen the external world but in such a way that behind everything material, spirit would have been present. He would have seen the spirit behind the physical world. All of a sudden—but please do not take that literally, for the process was obviously lengthy—the external world would have appeared to man at a certain time; he would have awakened. The inner world would have suddenly vanished but the consciousness of the spirit whence that world originated would have remained. Man would have seen not only the plants, animals and so forth but simultaneously the spirit whence they had come forth. Because the luciferic beings drew man down to the earth too soon, the external world had the effect of hiding the world of spirit from him; physical matter became opaque for him. Otherwise, he would have seen through it to the primordial spiritual ground of the world. Because man had come down too soon into matter, it proved to be too dense for him and he could not penetrate it. But from the middle of the Atlantean epoch onward, other retarded spiritual beings were able to impregnate this matter, in consequence of which it was as if clouded, made turbid, and man was again no longer able to behold the spiritual. These were the ahrimanic or Mephistophelian beings. Mephistopheles—Ahriman is not the same being as Lucifer. Through untruth Zarathustra calls Ahriman the liar. He beclouds the purity of the spirit of man, conceals the spiritual from him. Ahriman comes after Lucifer and instils into man the illusion that matter is a reality in itself. So in his progress, during which the divine-spiritual beings wanted their influence to work upon him, man allowed himself to be subject to two other influences: those of Lucifer who assails man in his inner nature, in the astral body, endeavoring to confuse and mislead him, and Ahriman, who, working from outside, deludes man to a certain extent, causing the external world to appear to him as maya, as matter, We must speak of Lucifer as the spirit who is active within man. Ahriman, on the contrary, is the spirit who spreads matter like a veil over the spiritual and makes recognition of the spiritual world impossible. These two spirits hold man back in his development to spirituality. It was especially the ahrimanic influence that asserted itself in man and caused the Atlantean part of the earth to perish.

In Lemuria, with their magical forces, men had a strong effect upon nature. They could, for example, control fire. The Atlanteans were no longer capable of this. But with their will they could control the germinal forces in which deep secrets lie hidden—the forces of air and water. Fire was beyond their control. Let us be clear that when we look at a locomotive today, constructed by and controlled by man, this is something quite different. Today man understands how to make the forces contained in coal serve his purposes, to turn them into a propelling power. This process means that he controls the lifeless, mineral force in the coal. The Atlantean, however, controlled the actual life force contained in seeds. Think of the life force that causes the blades of grass to sprout from the earth. This life force was extracted from the seed by the Atlanteans and put to use. In their sheds where the Atlanteans kept their “air ships” they laid up enormous stocks of seeds, just as we today store coal. With the force accumulated from the seeds they propelled their vehicles. When the clairvoyant looks back to that epoch, he sees these vehicles near the earth in the air that was still dense to a certain extent; equipped with a kind of steerage apparatus, they rose up and moved. The Atlanteans controlled these forces. Now it is unthinkable to imagine that the forces of plants—soul forces, that is to say—can be applied by magical means without at the same time influencing the forces of air and water. When the will of the Atlantean turned to evil and used these forces for egotistic purposes, he simultaneously evoked the forces of water and of air, released them, and ancient Atlantis perished as the result. The continents came into existence through the cooperation of the elements and man. But now the ahrimanic influence was gradually able to become so strong that man could no longer see the spiritual. Behind physical matter he could see nothing except the mineral element, the inorganic, and therewith the magical powers vanished ever more completely from him.

In the Atlantean epoch man was able to control and master the life force in the plant kingdom. In the Lemurian epoch it lay within his power to control the seminal forces of animals, and indeed it actually came to the point of Lemurian man applying these seminal forces of animals to transform animal forms into human forms. Every such magical action performed by man with the seminal forces, causes a release of the forces of fire. When such will becomes evil, the worst forces of black magic are generated and evoked. Today the most evil forces on the earth are still released when black magicians mishandle forces that are, generally speaking, withheld from mankind. These forces are powerful and at the same time holy. They are forces that, in the wise hands of worthy guides, can be applied in the highest and purest service of humanity.

Man now gradually became incapable of moulding his body. Cartilage and bones, the hard constituents, were integrated into it and man's resemblance to his present stature constantly increased. It was in the Atlantean epoch that what has been described first took place and it is therefore comprehensible that ancient Atlantis cannot be found by modern researchers. Hopes cherished by learned men of still being able to find traces of human evolution in those olden times, will never be fulfilled, because man was then a being whose limbs still consisted of soft, flabby substance. Such a body cannot be preserved, just as after a hundred years no remnants of the soft-bodied mollusks are to he found. Remnants of animals from ancient periods can still be found because the animals had already hardened while man's constitution was still soft and pliable. The animals came down into matter too soon; they were not able to wait. Out of the earliest human figures who had become physical too soon the most stunted human figures have come into existence. The noblest human figures stayed above the earth the longest, and remained soft and pliable. They waited until they were able to avoid an epoch during which they would have been obliged to remain stationary at a certain stage of hardening, as in the case of the animals. Because they were not able to wait, the animals have remained at a stage of rigidity and hardening.

The evolution of the earth has now been described up to the time when the forces of water were unleashed and ancient Atlantis perished. The human beings who were saved from Atlantis made their way on the one side toward America, on the other, to the Europe, Asia and Africa of today. These great migrations continued for long ages.

We will now think once more of ancient Atlantean culture. In the earliest period man possessed strong magical powers. With these powers he controlled the seed forces, mastered the forces of nature and in a certain way was still able to see into the spiritual world. Clairvoyance then gradually faded. Men were destined to found the culture belonging to the earth; they were to descend to the earth in the real sense. Thus, at the end of Atlantis there were two kinds of human beings within the peoples and races. Firstly, at the height of Atlantean culture there were seers, clairvoyants and powerful magicians who worked by means of magical forces and were able to see into the spiritual world. Beside them were people who were preparing to be the founders of present humanity. They already had within them the rudiments of the faculties possessed by men today. They could emphatically no longer equal the achievements of the old Atlanteans but they were able to make preparation for intelligence, for the power of judgment. They possessed the elementary faculties of calculation, computation, analysis and so forth. They were the people who developed the rudiments of the intelligence of today and no longer made use of the magical forces applied. by the Atlantean magicians at the time when their application was already fraught with danger on account of the powerful ahrimanic influence. They were those “others,” the despised people, rather like the anthroposophists today who meet together in small groups, or like the first Christians in ancient Rome who gathered together in the catacombs.

Now in Atlantis there were also centers of culture and ritual—we will call them the Atlantean Oracles—where what is called the Atlantean wisdom was harbored and practiced. In accordance with the differences in human souls due to their having come down to the earth from different planets, there were necessarily different Oracles for men of different constitutions. There was a Mars Oracle, a Jupiter Oracle, a Venus Oracle, and so on. These Oracles were sanctuaries where the initiates, who were sages of a certain degree, guided and led the Mars race, the Jupiter race, and so on. All these Oracles, however, were in turn led by the still more powerful Sun Oracle. This was the leading center of the Mysteries whence the cultural instructions for the other Oracles proceeded. As well as this highest leadership, all Mars men were under that of the center where the initiate of the Mars Oracle resided, together with his pupils; all Mercury souls were led from the Mercury Oracle, all Jupiter souls from the Jupiter Oracle, and so on. All these Oracle centers, however, were subject to the authority of the great initiate of the Sun Oracle.

This great leader of the Sun Oracle, the greatest initiate of Atlantis, directed his attention above all to that section of human beings who differed from the ordinary population in ancient Atlantis. They were simple people who were looked down upon and who no longer possessed magical powers. But it was they who were gathered together by the great initiate because they had developed the new faculties, even if only in a primitive form. It was from them that understanding of the new age was to be expected. The great initiate gathered together this useful material for the future, and also those old initiates or magicians who had not persisted in clinging egotistically to the former practices. Our present age presents a similar picture and can be compared with the conditions prevailing in Atlantis at that time. Today, too, there are on the one side the influential figures in the prevailing forms of culture, people who in their own way are magicians, working only with what is inorganic; on the other side, there are the despised people who still today want to work for the future. At that time, in Atlantis, the representatives of culture, the old magicians, also looked down with disparagement upon the small number of those who had developed the new faculty, which was useless in ancient Atlantis. The great initiate of the Sun Oracle did not, however, despise these people; today, too, the proud bearers of our culture look down upon a small number of human beings, upon the anthroposophists who gather in small, insignificant meeting places and are said to engage in all kinds of foolish activities. Generally speaking, they are unprofessional laymen who claim to be inaugurating the future. These are the people who are developing and preparing in themselves a faculty that to the others seems useless, but because it has a foreboding of the future is able to create a connection again with the spiritual world. In Atlantis long ago it was a matter of finding the connection with the physical, material world; the task today is to discover the spiritual again. Just as at that time the old initiate gathered his host together locally, directing his call to the simple, despised people, so today again, under different—not local—conditions, a call goes forth from the great Masters of Wisdom who are allowing certain spiritual treasures of wisdom to flow into humanity. Those possessed of certain qualities respond to this call as did certain human beings long ages ago; they were individuals who had within them primitive talents for calculation, computation and so forth.

This wisdom is not imparted in order that theosophical dogmas shall be grasped by the intellect but that they shall be understood by the heart. A man is then strong enough to know why theosophy is there today. It is there to meet a great challenge of evolution, and he who knows this also finds the strength to conquer all obstacles, come what may. He proceeds along his path because he knows that what is intended to come to pass through theosophy must come to pass for the further progress of humanity on the path to the spirit.

The great initiate of the Sun Oracle led the small group of human beings and founded a kind of cultural center in Asia. He drew these individuals to him in order to make them capable of founding post-Atlantean culture. During the great migration, everything that had come into existence in Atlantis had been mingled, jumbled together. It follows that in the post-Atlantean epoch one should no longer speak of races but of civilizations, cultures.

We will now turn to consider the consecutive civilizations in the post-Atlantean epoch, the first of which is the ancient Indian. A remarkable mixture of peoples had been saved after the Atlantean catastrophe and had congregated in primeval India. The human beings who lived there still had the deepest, overwhelming yearning for the spiritual world, knowing that from it they had been born and that now they had lost it. Thither the great initiate of the Sun Oracle sent the seven Holy Rishis. With longing fraught with pain, the man of ancient India maintained that the world of the senses is untrue and that the spiritual world from which he has descended is the only true world. It was, therefore, easy for the Holy Rishis to teach what they had to say about the primeval wisdom, about the Mysteries, to those who still harbored a longing for the spiritual world. To the ancient Indians the material world was maya, the great illusion.

Already a different attitude of soul prevailed in the second post-Atlantean epoch of culture, the ancient Persian epoch. Western thinking and research in the physical world realize that this wonderful world, constructed as it is according to laws of perfect harmony is worthy to be penetrated by the spirit. The people of Zarathustra had a boding realization of this. Those who have knowledge of the people of ancient Persia will be able to distinguish clearly between them and the people of India. To the latter, everything around them was maya, illusion; the spiritual world alone was real and a worthy goal of aspiration; that world alone was permeated by the highest self. Such an attitude of soul could not master the physical world. This became possible for the first time with the culture inaugurated by Zarathustra, the great pupil of the mighty initiate of the Sun Oracle. He knew and taught that the world outside is not maya but the expression of divine-spiritual reality, that behind it lies what Ahriman had hidden from man. What thus lies behind the world of sense must be disclosed and Zarathustra's aim was to find the spirit in the material world. That was his mission. In Ormuzd and Ahriman light and darkness are pitted against each other.

In the third epoch, the Egyptian-Chaldean-Assyrian-Babylonian, man had already formed a close link with the physical world. Lifting his eyes to the stellar script in the heavens, the deeds and the wisdom of the gods were revealed to him and he tried to understand and fathom them. The wonderful stellar wisdom of the Chaldean priesthood is a memorial of these strivings.

The fourth culture, that of Greece and Rome, leads man right down to the physical plane. He has now come to love it so dearly that he has quite forgotten his origin. He no longer understands the spiritual world. This is clearly indicated in the saying of the Greek hero, Achilles: “Better to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of the Shades.” The wonderful sculpture of Greece and the citizenship of Rome are the hallmarks of this fourth epoch of culture. The fifth cultural epoch is our own. Materialism and the department store give it a certain characteristic stamp.

The purpose of all these cultures is, after all, that the physical plane shall be gradually mastered by man. Two fundamental streams come to expression in the cultures that have existed until today. The views and trends of feeling of the Eastern and Western worlds confront each other at the present time. The Eastern world calls the physical plane maya or illusion and does not want to be entangled with it either in thoughts, acts or feelings. The basic aim of the Western conception of the world, however, is to penetrate into this material world, come to grips with it. Outwardly, therefore, things may come to a confrontation but each world has its own complete justification. Let the Western world concern itself with external culture and by this means develop the forces of the soul, and let the Eastern take its path. At the summit they come together.

Thus we think of the Indian who leads an inner, spiritual life, withdrawn from the outer, material world, and the Persian who still sees something inimical in matter but nevertheless infuses spirit into it. The Egyptian contemplates the spirit and its laws; the Chaldean sees in the movements of the stars the script of the gods in space and reveres the stellar wisdom as the expression. of divine-spiritual beings. We see the Greek who knew how to imprint in matter itself the ideal of beauty and perfection of what nature has created; the Greek personifies the epoch when we can marvel at the marriage between spirit and matter in the physical masterpieces of art. Reference must be made here to a deep, occult background. Think of the Greek temple in its majestic purity and beauty; it is the actual dwelling place of the god. The essential difference between these works of architecture and sculpture and those of other cultural epochs is that the Greek temple in its pure form is so supreme in the perfection of its lines, even from the architectonic, artistic standpoint, that nothing can equal it. if the soul steeps itself in these lines—in the ruins of the temple at this is still to be seen—if it contemplates a Doric or an Ionian temple and has something of what is called space consciousness, it perceives how these lines are actually integrated in space. You yourselves are aware that certain currents, certain streams, are present in space. The Greek temple follows the inevitable courses of these streams and presents them in physical reality. The Greek creates in space what he has actually found there. The essential secret of the Greek temple is the presence within it of the god himself. Whereas the congregation of the faithful is an integral part of the Gothic cathedral, the Greek temple is a whole in itself. The Gothic cathedral, with its pointed arches and windows, is only conceivable together with its congregation, whose hands, folded in devotion, mirror its forms and together with it constitute a whole. Spirituality was actually present in the Greek temple; it afforded the spiritual being an opportunity to descend and find a dwelling place.

But during this epoch, which has so well understood how to adorn the earth with masterpieces of art, men increasingly lost connection with the spiritual world. The physical world was full of brightness and light for a man but when he passed through death during the epoch of Greco-Latin culture, the spiritual world was barren, cold and dark for him. During the post-Atlantean era, man had conquered the physical world but in the spiritual world sadness and gloom were his lot. Even the initiates, who both here and in yonder world are the teachers of mankind, could bring no consolation. When they told those who were living between death and a new birth about happenings in the physical world, those human souls became even more sorrowful; with every fiber of their beings they clung to the material world that was now taken from them. Here, too, a change took place through the event of Golgotha and the appearance of Christ Jesus on the earth. After His death on the Cross He descended into the Underworld—this is called the journey to Hell—and to those who were no longer living in a physical body He proclaimed that in very truth life had been victorious over death. It was thereby again made possible for souls to rise into the spiritual world.

The way we say “I think,” “I feel,” “I will” in ordinary life is really maya. It's only with “I am” that we're saying something that's true. Regarding our thoughts we can often notice that they press in from all sides when we would really like to exclude them. This shows that we don't think ourselves, but that beings are thinking in us. If only the progressive, good Gods had worked in us we would never have been under the illusion that it's we who think. Instead of falling into a deep, dreamless sleep at night we would have seen a big Imagination of our thoughts and ideas around us, permeated completely by the life and substance of higher beings. We would then have remembered this during the day and we'd always know that higher beings' life is in our thoughts. But Lucifer worked and wove himself completely into our thought life. If this imagination would appear it would show us that almost all of our thought life has become luciferic. And during the day we would constantly feel how terrible it is that Lucifer thinks in me. To protect us from this unconscious sleep comes over us at night, and we live in the maya idea that we think ourselves. But we esoterics must learn to face the truth. We get the strength to bear the thought that Lucifer thinks in us if we often meditate on the mantric statement, It thinks me, while we're completely permeated by piety.

It's easier to see that we're not masters of our feeling life. Feelings storm up in us, and we often can't control them very much. If our development had remained connected with progressive powers only here, then nocturnal Imaginations would have shown us that our feelings are of the same substance as the life that weaves through nature's great life realm. We would see plants' etheric archetypes, that are quite different from physical plants, and we would know that what pulses through the etheric life realm is also in our feelings. We would then remember this during the day as we looked at outer nature. But Ahriman has worked into all of this, and so we can say that in favourable cases he lives in maybe two thirds of our feelings, but most often it's more like three quarters of them, and the good Gods only live in a very small part of them. And we would see this in an Imagination at night because we would remain conscious, and during the day when we looked at nature outside we would know that Ahriman lives in our feelings that are related to weaving in the life realm. And we would think that it's terrible that Ahriman feels in us. To get the strength to bear this truth we must meditate on the sentence: It weaves me—with intense thankfulness to the good Gods who haven't left us completely yet. As far as our will impulses go it's very clear that our will is almost always determined by causes outside us, that the outer world's attractions and stimulations drive us to our actions. Here too, if Lucifer and Ahriman hadn't intervened we would have seen the working of spiritual beings at night, and we would have felt that they were united with this. And during the day we would have known nothing else than a working in agreement with what is willed by the good Gods. Our will would be the will of the spiritual world. But Ahriman's influence has also worked into this, and we should also see and know this during the day and we get the strength to bear this by meditating: It works me—with deep reverence for high spiritual beings.

So we see that the above mentioned “I think,” “I feel,” “I will” is really given to us in ordinary life as maya, since we can't bear the truth. Meditation on the mantra: It thinks me—It weaves me—It works me—can give a man a mighty push forwards into the spiritual world all by itself without other meditations.

The following about the letters in these mantras is also of importance.

It thinks me, Es denkt mich = e e i is getting close to another being with shyness and reverence; i is the union with this being whom we're approaching. But the d t indicates a feeling of still being reverentially separated. In It weaves me, Es webt michwe have the same e e i but w instead of d, a much more intimate approach. One weaves and waves completely into the other being; the waviness of the w carries us over all by itself. Everything is completely reversed in It works me, Es wirkt mich: e i i. One is entirely in the other being and works from there; one has united with it completely.

The ten words of the rosicrucian verse are arranged in such a way that the letters are also of importance. In Ex Deo nascimur we have the mood that we can feel on awaking with respect to our body, e e o a i u. In e we have a shyness to approach our physical and etheric bodies that the Gods built up during long world periods, o is a wanting to embrace, a is a stepping back with tremendous reverence, i is a wanting to unite, and u holds all of this together. In ... morimur—the statement in which we have this unspeakable word. We can call this a post-mortem mood, dying in Christ, i i o o i u: being one, embracing, becoming completely united, all of this summarized. Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus. This expresses the attainment of self-consciousness in the spheres we enter after death. Here the consonants are more important; p r = feeling that one is placed in something, i stands for the I-feeling, the realizing oneself as an I, self-consciousness in the post-mortem state, s is the spinal column's form. Thus the masters have placed the secrets of the creative word in here, and ever more secrets can be found in it. Ten words: the ten-fold being of man, of which the fifth is the unspeakable name.