The Rudolf Steiner Archive

This is the 8th of 17 lectures given by Rudolf Steiner at various cities, in 1911. The title of this series of lectures is: The Mission of the New Spiritual Revelation. This address was given following a Concert at the Berlin Group of the Anthroposophical Society, at which Mendelssohn's Overture of the Hebrides had been played).

Through the tones and harmonies of this Overture we have been led in spirit to the shores of Scotland, and in our souls, we have thus followed again a path of travel which, during the course of human evolution, has been deeply influenced by the secrets of karma. For, from entirely different parts of the western hemisphere of our earth, as if through a karmic current of migration, various peoples were once transplanted into that region, and its vicinity, to which these tones now lead us. And many strange destinies are made known to us. We are told, both by what Occultism relates as well as by outer historical documents, of what these peoples experienced in very ancient times on this particular part of the earth.

A memory of the mysterious destinies of these peoples arose again, as if newly awakened, when about 1772 the cave on the Island of Staffa belonging to the Hebrides, known as Fingal's Cave, was rediscovered. Those who beheld it were reminded of mysterious ancient destinies when they saw how Nature herself seemed to have constructed something which may be likened to a wonderful cathedral. It is constructed with great symmetry in long aisles of countless pillars towering aloft: above there arches a ceiling of the same stonework, while below the bases of the pillars are washed by the inrushing foaming waves of the sea which ceaselessly beat and resound with a music which is like thunder within this mighty temple. Dropping water drips steadily from strange stone formations upon the stalactites beneath, making melodious magical music.

A spectacle of this kind actually exists there. And those who, upon discovering it, had a sense for the mysterious things which once took place in this region, must have been reminded of the hero who once upon a time, as one of the most famous individualities of the West, guided destiny here in such a strange way, and whose fame was sung by his son, the blind Ossian, who is like a western Homer—a blind singer.

If we look back and see how deeply people were impressed by what they heard about this place, we shall be able to understand how it was that Macpherson's revival of this ancient song in the 18^th Century made such a mighty impression upon Europe. There is nothing which may be compared with the impression made by this poem. Goethe, Herder, Napoleon harkened to it—and all believed to discern in its rhythms and sounds something of the magic of primeval days. Here we must understand that a spiritual world such as still existed at that time, arose within their hearts, and felt itself drawn to what sounded forth out of this song! And what was it that thus sounded forth?

We must now turn our gaze to those times which fall together with the first impulses of Christianity and the few centuries which followed. What happened up there in the vicinity of the Hebrides, in Ireland and Scotland—in ancient Erin, which included all the neighboring islands between Ireland and Scotland, as well as the northern part of Scotland itself. Here we must seek for the kernel of those peoples, of Celtic origin, who had most of all preserved the ancient Atlantian clairvoyance in its full purity. The others who had wandered farther to the East had developed further, and so no longer remained in connection with the ancient gods. The western peoples, however, had preserved for themselves the possibility of experiencing an ancient clairvoyance now entirely immersed in the personality, in the individuality. And they were led to this particular part of the earth, as if for a special mission, where a structure confronted them which mirrored their own music's inner depths and was itself architecturally formed entirely out of the spiritual world, a structure which I have just tried to characterize with a few words—Fingal's Cave. We shall imagine these events rightly if we realize that the cave acted as a focus point, mirroring what lived in the souls of these human beings who, through their karma, were sent hither as to a temple erected by the gods themselves. Here those human beings were prepared who should later receive the Christ Impulse with their full human being and were here to undergo something extremely strange by way of preparation.

Again we shall be able to imagine all this if we realize that here particularly those ancient folk customs were preserved whereby the tribe was divided into smaller groups based upon family. Those who were related by blood felt themselves closely connected, while all others were looked upon as strangers, as belong[ing] to another Group Ego. During the migrations from Atlantis toward the East, all that the Druid priests, who remained behind here in the West, were able to give to the people poured itself out over these individual groups as a harmonizing influence. And what they were able to give still lived on in the bards. We shall only rightly understand what worked through these bards, however, if we make clear to ourselves that here the most elemental passions met together with the ancient powers of sight into the spiritual world, and that those who, with powerful life forces, sometimes with rage and passion, fought as representatives of their clan against other clans, perceived at the same time impulses working out of the spiritual world which directed them in battle.

Such an active connection between the physical and the soul realms cannot be conceived of today. When a hero raised his sword he believed that a spirit out of the air guided it, and in the spirit he beheld an ancestor who had fought upon this same battlefield in former times and who had gone up yonder to help now from over there. In their battle ranks they felt their ancestors actively aiding them, their ancestors on both sides—and they did not only feel them ... they heard them clairaudiently! It was a wonderful conception which lived in these peoples, that the heroes had to fight upon the battlefields and to shed their blood, but that after death they ascended into the spiritual world, and that their spirits then vibrated as tone—sounding through the air as a spiritual reality.

Those who had proven themselves in battle, but had trained themselves at the same time so that they could listen to what sounded out of the winds as the voice of the past, who were blind for the physical world, who could no longer see the flashing of the swords but were blind for the physical plane—these were highly honoured! And one of these was Ossian. When the heroes swung their swords, they were conscious that their deeds would resound further into the spiritual world and that bards would appear who would preserve all this in their songs. This was perceived in living reality by these peoples.

But all this creates an altogether different conception of humanity. It creates the conception that the human being is united with spiritual powers which sound forth out of the whole of Nature. For he cannot look upon a storm or a flash of lightning, he cannot hear the thunder or the surging of the sea without sensing that out of all the activities of Nature spirits work who are connected with the souls of the past, with the souls of his own ancestors. Thus the activity of Nature was at that time something altogether different than for us today. And it is for this reason that the rhythms and sounds of this song are so important, which, after being handed down for centuries through tradition only, were revived by the Scotsman Macpherson so that they create for us again a consciousness of the connection of the human being with the souls of his ancestors and with the phenomena of Nature.

We can understand how this Scotsman had in a certain sense a congenial feeling when he described how a line of battle stormed into the field, sweeping darkness before it, even as did the spirits who took part in the battle. This song is in reality something which was able to make a great impression upon spiritual Europe. The whole character of the description, even though given in a rather free poetical form, awakes in us a feeling for the kind of perception which lived in these ancient peoples. There was active in them a living knowledge, a living wisdom, concerning their connection with the spiritual world and the world of Nature in which the spiritual world works.

Out of such wisdom the finest sons from the different tribes—that is, those who had the strongest connection with the spirits of the past, who more than others allowed these spirits of the past to live in their deeds—were chosen as a picked band. And those who had the strongest clairvoyant forces were placed at its head. This band had to defend the kernel of the Celtic peoples against the peoples of the surrounding world. And one of these leaders was the clairvoyant hero, who has come down to us under the name of Fingal. How Fingal was active in the defense of the ancient gods against those who wished to endanger them—all this was handed down in ancient songs, heard out of the spiritual world—the ancient songs of the bard Ossian, Fingal's son, so that it remained alive even into the 16^th and 17^th Centuries. What Fingal achieved, what his son Ossian heard when Fingal had ascended into the spiritual realm, what their descendants heard in the rhythms and sounds of Ossian's songs with which they ever and again ensouled their deeds, this it was which worked on so mightily even into the 18^th Century. And we shall win a conception of this if we realize how Ossian allowed the voice of his father, Fingal, to sound forth in his songs.

We are told how the heroes find themselves in a difficult position. They are almost overthrown ... when new life fills the band: “The king stood by the stone of Lubar. Thrice he reared his terrible voice. The deer started from the fountains of Cromia. The rocks shook on all their hills. Like the noise of a hundred mountain streams, that burst, and roar, and foam! Like the clouds, that gather to a tempest on the blue face of the sky! So met the sons of the desert round the terrible voice of Fingal. Pleasant was the voice of the king of Morven to the warriors of his land. Often had he led them to battle; often returned with the spoils of the foe.”

“‘Come to battle,’ said the king, ‘ye children of echoing Selma! Come to the death of thousands. Comhal's son will see the fight. My sword shall wave on the hill, the defense of my people in war. But never may you need it, warriors; while the son of Morni fights, the chief of mighty men! He shall lead my battle, that his fame may rise in song! O ye ghosts of heroes dead! Ye riders of the storm of Cromia! Receive my falling people with joy, and bear them to your hills. And may the blast of Lena carry them over my seas, that they may come to my silent dreams, and delight my soul in rest’ ...”

“Now like a dark and stormy cloud, edges round with the red lightning of heaven, flying westward from the morning's beam, the king of Selma removed. Terrible is the light of his armor; two spears are in his hand. His gray hair falls on the wind. He often looks back on the war. Three bards attend the son of fame, to bear his words to the chiefs. High on Cromia's side he sat, waving the lightning of his sword, and as he waved we moved ...”

“Fingal at once arose in arms. Thrice he reared his dreadful voice. Cromia answered around. The sons of the desert stood still. They bent their blushing faces to earth, ashamed at the presence of the king. He came like a cloud of rain in the day of the sun, when slow it rolls on the hill, and fields expect the shower. Silence attends its slow progress aloft: but the tempest is soon to arise. Swaran beheld the terrible kings of Morven. He stopped in the midst of his course. Dark he leaned on his spear, rolling his red eyes around. Silent and tall he seemed, as an oak on the banks of Lubar, which had its branches blasted of old by the lightning of heaven. It bends over the stream: the grey moss whistles in the wind: so stood the king. Then slowly he retired to the rising heath of Lena. His thousands pour around the hero. Darkness gathers on the hill!”

“Fingal, like a beam from heaven, shone in the midst of his people. His heroes gather around him. He sends forth the voice of his power: ‘Raise my standards on high, spread them on Lena's wind, like the flames of an hundred hills! Let them sound on the winds of Erin, and remind us of the fight. Ye sons of the roaring streams, that pour from a thousand hills, be near the king of Morven! Attend to the words of his power! Gaul, strongest arm of death! O! Oscar of the future fights! Connal, son of the blue shields of Sora! Dermid, of the dark brown hair! Ossian, king of many songs!—Be near your father's arm!’ We reared the sunbeam of battle; the standard of the king! Each hero exulted with joy, as, waving, it flew in the wind. It was studded with gold above, as the blue wide shell of the nightly sky. Each hero had his standard, too, and each his gloomy mien!”

Thus Fingal stormed into battle, thus he is described by his son Ossian.

No wonder that this life, this consciousness of a connection with the spiritual world which sank deep into these peoples, into the souls of the ancient Celts, is the best preparation whereby they could spread the personal divine element throughout the West in their own way and from their own soil. For what they had experienced in the form of passion and desire, what they had heard sounding forth in the melodies of the spiritual world, prepared them for a later time when they brought into the world sons who revealed these passions in their souls in a purified and milder form. And thus we may say—it seems to us as if Erin's finest sons were to hear again the voices of their ancient bards singing of what they once heard out of the spiritual world as the deeds of their forefathers, but as if in Erin's finest sons the ancient battle cries had now been formed and clarified, and had become words which could express the greatest impulse of mankind.

All this sounded forth out of olden times in the songs about the deeds of the ancient Celts who fought out many things in mighty battles in order to prepare themselves for further deeds of spiritual life in later times, as we recognize them again today in that which the finest sons of the West have achieved. These were the impulses which flowed into the souls of human beings in the 18^th Century, when these ancient songs were revived. And it is this which was remembered by those who saw again the wonderful cathedral, built as if by Nature herself, and which caused them to say to themselves—“Here is a site, a gathering place, given to man by karma, in order that what the bards were able to sing about the deeds of their ancestors, about all that the heroes did to steel their forces, might sound back to them as in an echo out of this temple which they themselves did not have to build—out of their holy temple which was built for them by the spirits of Nature and which could be an instrument of enthusiasm for all who beheld it.”

So the tones and harmonies of this Overture which we have just heard offer an opportunity which allows us to sense, in our own way at least, something of the deep and mysterious events which do indeed reign in the history of mankind, events which occurred long before our present era on almost the same soil upon which they now continue to live. As we must deepen ourselves in all that lives within us, and as all that lives within us is only a further resounding of what was there in the past, so this feeling, this sense, for what once was and now works further in mankind is of great significance for occult life.

We left human evolution at the point where the human being entered into what we would call the mineral realm. He had now become mineral. A brain had been developing from the middle of the Lemurian age. The mineral world achieved its highest quality when the brain developed, with intellectuality establishing itself within it. This descent of humanity to the mineral world was only possible because earlier stages of evolution had taken the human being through the first, second and third elemental worlds.⁵¹ Before going through the three elemental worlds the human being was pure monad, pure spirit (atman, budhi, manas). He then descended through the three elemental worlds into the fourth. The mineral world is the fourth world. Who was actively involved in this development?

Spirits called 'dhyani of wisdom' were active, putting the body together in its mineral form from the outside. And it was only when the brain was finished that the stream of evolution could continue from inside. If the dhyanic spirits of wisdom had continued to work from outside for themselves at this time, the human being would have grown harder even than the mineral world; he would have had no inwardness, no spirituality to counter the hardening tendencies of matter, and he would have been lost to cosmic life. He would have dropped away like a cinder in the course of evolution, cast out from the successive natural worlds. If a life in mind and spirit had not intervened from inside, a world of completely petrified human concretions would have arisen that would have been incapable of evolving further. Such a petrified world must drop out from the succession of worlds. Occultists call this hypothetical world the 'eighth sphere'.

As they were lagging behind at the time, the dhyani of wisdom would have taken humanity to a dead end. At this point the dhyani that had lagged behind before and were now ascending took hold of humanity. This spiritual principle took humanity, then moving towards hardening, to bring spirituality into human evolution. The dhyani working from inside sought to spiritualize the human being more and more, and in that case there would have been wisdom only. The human being then had two avenues open to him—to fall to the eighth sphere,⁵² or to be wholly spiritualized. Either would inevitably have led to something other than humanity is today—humanity would either have vanished into the eighth sphere, or it would have been steadily getting more spiritual. These two streams worked against each other from the middle of the Lemurian age. The situation would have remained like this if the dhyani that had built up the human being from outside and would have taken him onward into the eighth sphere had not taken in budhi or love. (In Marie Steiner-von Sivers’ notes, this sentence reads: ‘It would have remained like this if the dhyanic spirits of love had not incarnated in order to bring love also into matter.’) They thus saved the material aspect of the human being from perdition. They joined the others as a third stream; these were working from the outside.

With the three streams acting together, part of the material, mineral world became this tripartite human being made up of matter, or body, of soul and spirit. Anything that could not be taken along because the streams were not equal did indeed turn into cinders. That is [today’s] moon. It is a piece of the eighth sphere; cinder. In the moon we have a symbol, for the time being, of what the first dhyani might have achieved. The activity of the dhyanic spirits, which had given the human being his form until then is thus symbolized in the moon. In Jewish esoteric language they are collectively called Yahveh or Jehovah, the god of macrocosmic wisdom, of form. H. P. Blavatsky therefore calls him a moon god, the god of form. In [A. P. Sinnet’s] Esoteric Buddhism, the moon is seen as part of the eighth sphere. It is only a part of it, however, a symbol of what the human being would have been in the eighth sphere. Yahveh is the elohim of the fourth round, the lord of wisdom-filled form (the fourth elohim).

From the middle of the fourth round, the lord of love was active—the Christ, the world's love, the second Logos. The lord of form, the fourth elohim, was wisdom, the third Logos. Jehovah is the spirit of the third Logos. In the spirit, the Christ principle, the principle of love, began in the middle of the Lemurian age. Lucifer intervened at the same time. We must get to know the difference between things perishable and imperishable. Greek sculptors, for example, created magnificent, glorious works, but a time will come when they will all have perished. If those works were all, we would have to say that they are perishable. Everything on the physical plane is mortal in this way. But the fact that artists work on the physical plane means something that will remain for the artist's spirit, something that would not exist if he had not been working on the physical plane. Taking in something done on a lower plane is the faculty of the spirit on a higher plane—that is evolution. It is only by incarnating that human beings gain riches in their spirit which they would not otherwise have. That is what the perishable means for the imperishable.

The skeletal system is the most mineral aspect of the human being. It also gives physical human beings at the present time their most perfect form. In future Earth evolution, the digestion, the heart, and so on will be more and more perfect, but not the skeletal system. This will gradually vanish. Standing firm in the physical world with one’s skeletal system is important. Human beings will be able to take with them what they have become through their skeletal system.

The fact that the bones of the Christ must not be broken means that the part of him which belonged to the mineral world must not be destroyed, had to be left intact. The symbols from the mysteries were then for the first time lived out in the world. The Christ becoming a human being was one of the most important cosmic events in the fourth sub-race of the fifth root race. The founders of earlier religions had taught wisdom; the Christ teaches love.

The sub-races of the fifth root-race

• 51. Luke 18:19, Matthew 19:17.
• 52. See Note 6.
• 53. See the 6th and 12th lectures in this series. Also lectures given in Berlin on 9 and 16 October 1915, in Foundations of Esotericism, note 13, and the lecture given on 18 October in The Occult Movement, note 23.

It has been several decades since a certain scientific method of comparing different religions was developed. Those who devote themselves to this comparison are struck by how much agreement, even similarity, there is between the different religions. The most diverse evidence is cited to show that a certain core of belief underlies them all, from the Indian to the Germanic, the Near Eastern to the Greek, and that it can even be found in the uncivilized peoples of Africa and North America. The childlike predispositions of the various peoples have worked in the same way and have wanted to give enlightenment about the soul, the world, and God in the same way; for everywhere man is subject to the same powerlessness in the face of impending fate. The so-called Enlightenment assumes that people have attributed divine beings and forces to natural phenomena; it starts from the point of view that all religious beliefs are childish fantasies and that, finally, nations have now entered the age of reason, when people finally know how to understand these things.

But a thorough investigation teaches us otherwise. By comparing the Indian and Germanic intellectual spheres, we realize that before a thorough research, that doctrine of fantasy figures does not hold up. The deeper one penetrates, the more that hypothesis of enlightenment collapses, and two things prove that it is nothing: Firstly, we discover a deep meaning in the childlike ideas of recognized wild peoples. The more impartially we look at them, the deeper such folk religions appear to us; images and animals are the content of ideas that have an infinitely deep meaning.

Secondly, the people do not create poetry in the way that the gentlemen at the green table of scholarship imagine it. The people do not personify natural phenomena. Thus, the saga of Indra, which tells of how he set out with seven priestly sages to reclaim a number of cows that had escaped him to culture, was interpreted as if the god Indra personified the dawn and the seven cows personified darkness. Likewise, Buddha was seen as the sun god and it was said that his life was a personification of the sun – in short, the people personify natural phenomena.

Such a poetic folk poetry does not exist. Only those who are strangers to the people can arrive at such a view. Those who penetrate deeper will become more and more familiar with what spiritual research teaches in the Secret Doctrine.

The childlike religious ideas proceed from pure higher spiritual ideas and from the fact that a common, similar view underlies the various myths. This teaching is called the secret teaching of humanity. It has always been supported by the great spiritual leaders of humanity. Religions come not from the poetic folk poetry, but from the great initiates.

The original wisdom is the same, only it is structured according to the abilities and talents of the different peoples; thus we find a different form for the Greek peninsula, another for American, Indian, Germanic peoples. The different images are adapted to the different ways of life and talents of the individuals.

The profound spiritual basis reveals to us that a secret primordial revelation underlies all these religions. To many, this truth seems incredible, but only because of unfamiliarity with the facts, which appear to be imperfect because the great leaders can only give them such an expression as will be understood.

The very general secret doctrine of the fundamental primal generation is interesting in the history of the development of nations.

Although it is a sin against the holy spirit of modern monism to regard man as a two-part entity, and one risks being called a dualist, despite the unified origin , which of course underlies what we call “human”, the two-part nature of his being can be justifiably demonstrated, just as the existence of water can be demonstrated from hydrogen and oxygen. The two substances are present in it despite the unity of the whole. In the same way, it can be shown that the higher and lower selves of the human being have a common source. How a person's nature expresses itself, how he lives, strives and works, is revealed in a duality, just as water is revealed in the duality of hydrogen and oxygen. We therefore distinguish:

Firstly, the lower nature, which is more physical, more of the lower nature of matter.

Secondly, the higher nature, which is more spiritual, more of the higher nature of the spirit.

Development consists in ennobling the lower nature. No one has presented this better than Schiller in his “Aesthetic Letters,” where he says: Man is subject to the necessities of nature on the one hand, he is their slave as long as he clings to them, but he is also a slave to ironclad necessity of reason. Only he awakens to freedom who ennobles the lower nature through the higher nature. It is not the man who denies his lower nature who stands high, but he who ennobles it so that he can abandon himself to it.

The Secret Doctrine teaches that man overcomes his sensual nature through the spiritual and transforms his being in such a way that he receives a new impression of spirituality. The mystics often say: Man is a small world, and what surrounds him is the great world. He contains in miniature everything that the great world has around him. Schiller writes to Goethe in the first letter:

They take all of nature together to get light on the individual; in the totality of its manifestations, they seek the explanation for the individual. Goethe wanted man to be recognized as a microcosm in relation to the macrocosm, the great world. Paracelsus expressed it in the beautiful image: When we observe the individual phenomena of nature outside, they appear like letters, man as the word composed of them. Everything that is scattered outside in the great is in the small man.

In the sense of the secret teaching, the struggle that is fought within man and finally receives his purification is an image of the great struggle in nature outside. Just as in man the lower nature of the physical-visible is opposed to the spiritual nature of the invisible, so the Secret Doctrine opposes the nature of the visible universe - stones, plants, animals - as the second, the forces of nature, which are hidden in the individual things.

The divine part of man also corresponds to a divine part here. The Secret Doctrine also distinguishes here between the visible and the invisible, the physical and the spiritual. The man before you seems to be what is outwardly expressed in his plastic form, but through deeper causes, in the outburst of his passions, the forces of his lower nature are revealed. Likewise, nature, like man in his body, finds physical expression in physical forms, in which forces are hidden just as they are in the lower nature of man. The lightning flashes in the cloud. The Secret Doctrine not only shows this comparison as fundamental, but also that the divine entities in nature are related to what rules and lives in man as his spirit. The same thing that ennobles the lower nature of man has overcome the lower nature in nature. Minerals, plants and animals are the plastic expression of the nature of God in descending order, while the invisible spirits in nature signify, for the Secret Doctrine, the ascent into the higher nature. They are more advanced entities than man. Animals, plants and minerals are further advanced on the descending path.

A picture of this development is given by coal. It is stone, a mineral. Millions of years ago it was part of living beings, plants. Great forests have perished and become these stone masses. What was once a living being has become a fossil. This is admitted by science.

In the sea basin, limestone formations are piled up in many different ways, created by animals that secreted lime shells. Here we find vast masses of limestone, prepared by living things. The dead is nothing other than a product of life.

The question arises: how does the living emerge from the dead?

In truth, not only does the living emerge from the dead, but all that is dead emerges from the living. Even rock crystal is a differentiation from the primal living.

If we follow the line of descent downwards from animals to fish, we finally find cartilaginous fish that have not yet developed any bones. In the same way, the physical human being has ancestors that had cartilage instead of bone, who are not yet at the stage where the petrification process has begun. Just as human bone turns to stone, so granite masses have also emerged from what was originally soft living matter.

Where does everything come from? From an original living organization, and this from original spirituality. — We find the overcoming of the lower by the higher everywhere, even outside. The lower has detached itself by the higher detaching itself.

But then there must be a great unity: as between the spiritual and the physical in man, so also a great unity between the great spirituality and the lower nature outside.

This unity is expressed by the various creeds. Just as it is clear that those who have today thrown off the lower nature were once struggling and striving beings, so the initiates are simply more advanced than their brothers; they have overcome the struggle and therefore know more.

At the bottom of all creeds we find the premise of the struggle of the higher nature against the lower and the conviction that there are initiates who are the leaders of humanity. — How has the Secret Doctrine been expressed among the Germanic peoples? There too we find the interpretation that the people have been poetizing, symbolizing the forces of nature.

We find a basis for the theosophical world view in a work by Ludwig Laistner: “Riddles of the Sphinx” on myth research. As is so often the case, the theosophist can learn the most from the non-theosophist, so we may start from his basic principles here. Let us start from a simple folk tale, the legend of the Midday Woman. She lives in the most diverse areas and has the following content: If you go to the field early in the morning to work and fail to go home at the appropriate hour, during the lunch break between twelve and one o'clock, the midday woman appears and asks him questions that are difficult to answer, about weaving, flax cultivation and the like, related to his work. During the whole of the lunch hour, questions are asked of him, all of which he must answer. If he misses even one, she comes with the sickle and cuts his throat. In some areas, it is said that you can get rid of her by reciting the Lord's Prayer, but it is not that simple, it has to be recited backwards, not from the beginning, but from the end. There is another spinning room saying related to this legend: “You ask like the midday woman.” Laistner interprets it as follows: This legend has its origin in the state that is brought about in a person when he stays outside in the field and falls asleep. Then the environment has such an effect that the dream always takes on this form in a similar way. Laistner traces all these legends back to the riddle of the Sphinx. It is the same torment of questioning that is found in this. In between lies a whole world of myths and legends. It has nothing to do with folk poetry, but can be explained by what the dream does to the sleeper. The dream is the main symbol. You catch a frog in your dream, wake up and find the corner of the bedspread in your hand. Legends and myths simply have their origin in the dream fantasy. From there, Laistner would have had only one step to the theosophical view, according to which there is not only the ordinary everyday state of consciousness, but another state of consciousness that, like the dream images, gives the outer things a different meaning: the tip of the bedspread is transformed into the image of a frog. The dream, a means of occult development, gives symbols of a higher spiritual world. Then, in contrast to this ordinary dream state, a higher state of consciousness arises in which the human being becomes aware of sensory perceptions. What shines into the dawning consciousness from the higher state of consciousness is the dream. This state is also present in a dull form in mediums in a trance: daytime consciousness is extinguished and a dusky consciousness has set in.

Everything in the world has developed, including man's consciousness today. Just as his organs have changed, so has he changed in terms of consciousness. He used to have no daytime consciousness, but a dim clairvoyant consciousness. Just as the body has organs whose significance fades, so the state that the person who misses the lunch break falls into is an echo of the old clairvoyant consciousness. It works in such a way that the untrained person sees everything the wrong way round; things appear as if in a mirror image. So, for example, you have to read 365 563. In this higher spiritual world, the astral world, man sees his desire. Everything in this plan attacks him in a retrograde direction, in the opposite order. The people therefore say quite correctly: If you want to escape the midday woman, you have to say the Lord's Prayer backwards, namely do something that does not correspond to the laws of this world.

These legends and myths deal with a different state of consciousness. It is only in this light that they can be explained to our medieval ancestors. Our ancestors had a clairvoyant consciousness, and the legends are echoes of it. This is the secret of the Germanic myths in particular. If you look behind the scenes of nature, you will see how the myths are expressed.

The dragon fight of the Siegfried saga is nothing other than the fight of higher wisdom against lower wisdom. The ancient Germans were a nation of warriors, their god was a warrior god, and their fight was a fight against dragons.

The astral picture, perceived clairvoyantly, can also be found in the Baldur saga: the primal struggle of the older brothers, the gods, against the lower ones, which has its echo in the forces of nature. The people see this and express it clairvoyantly as the real overcoming of Baldur by the blind Hödur.

It is said that Baldur represents the sun god, who was overcome by the winter god. But the saga means the struggle between beings of light and beings of darkness. The old Teuton remembers the primeval times, when he saw the darkness illuminated by spiritual light, when he saw the darkness illuminated by astral light - Hödur means astral blindness. — The clairvoyant consciousness has experienced the saga of Baldur. The Secret Doctrine, which tells us that there were initiates, also presents Wotan as an initiate. He was not a divine being, but a man who had raised himself up. The story that he hung on the gallows for nine days, wriggled through gorges and crevices like a snake to Gunnlöd, in order to receive the drink of initiation from the Valkyrie's cup, is consistent with the ancient cross initiation, with Egyptian mysticism. For three days and nights, Wotan is with Gunnlöd as a snake, which refers to the initiates. The higher soul, through which the ascent to higher levels is accomplished, is designated by the feminine.

The saga of Siegfried is also a picture of initiation. Siegfried acquires invulnerability, that is, he becomes insensitive to physical impressions, and thus becomes a companion of the Valkyrie. The initiates become invisible through the magic hood, that is, invisible as initiates, otherwise they remain visible (physically).

What then is initiation? Every nation has developed its secret teaching in a way that corresponds to its customs and traditions. The Germans were warriors, and a hero was called one who had fallen on the battlefield; he began the journey to Valhalla. The Valkyrie met him, that is, his own higher soul meets him when he passes through the gates of death.

“He who does not die before dying, when he dies, perishes.” That is, he who does not learn about that world beforehand, dies with death. Initiation is the forefeeling of what awaits the soul when it passes through the gates of death. The blessed warrior is united with the Valkyrie when he enters Valhalla: Siegfried with Brünhild. The leaders of the people clothed the initiation in this form. Even in this part of the saga, the Secret Doctrine finds expression in language that the people can understand.

The divine world, which has suppressed its nature, we find again in the giants.

The Secret Doctrine also tells how the migration of the peoples took place. Between Europe and America lay the Atlantic continent. Even the “Kosmos,” a magazine that swims in the Haeckelian direction, presents this as a hypothesis in the tenth issue. It only recognizes the existence of plants and animals, but that does not prevent the presence of humans, because science always lags behind.

From then on, people turned eastwards. Those who moved as far as Central and Eastern Asia form the basis of ancient Indian Asia, those who remained behind form the basis of the Celts and Germans. The Celts have progressed furthest in the transformation from the old dull clairvoyant consciousness to the present sensual consciousness. The Germans remained with the astral consciousness of the Atlanteans long after the Asians had developed to the day consciousness.

In the epoch before the Vedas, the teaching arose that was based more on ordinary day-consciousness. But man can never lose the connection with the spiritual, and so the longing arose there to find the way to the old clairvoyance by artificial means. That artificial clairvoyance arose there, which the wise strove for through inner development - yoga. Thus in India we have artificial clairvoyance with complete consciousness during the day, while among the Teutons the old consciousness of clairvoyance is still preserved. Among the Teutons, myths and legends form a dim expression of the secret doctrine as compared with that obtained by the initiates of modern times through artificial clairvoyance. For the people who no longer have clairvoyance, the divine worlds must be depicted. That is where the idol images come from, artificially prepared replicas by man. Among the ancient Germans, the old myths still lived in the people, in the old, retained symbolism, while in ancient India, the secret doctrine is artificially expressed by those who aspire to it. What we obtain from India is therefore more of an intellectual form, but the same secret doctrine that is expressed much more directly in the old Germanic myths.

The idols of the Indians and the theosophical doctrine: The renewal of the more theosophical doctrine of artificial clairvoyance in India goes completely parallel with what still lives in the old legends in Germania. Therefore, we do not need any Indian terminology in Europe, we only need to understand and revive what is original in Europe. We can get to the bottom of a great European secret doctrine and will get there.

The course of the secret teaching is determined by something else. The course of the future is prophetically expressed in the old Germanic secret teaching. The reference to Christianity is expressed in a powerful way. The research into legends, which is connected with the secret teaching, finds a coherent truth in the legend and in Christianity. Krimhild betrays her husband by attaching the cross. What does this deep trait indicate? It indicates the prophetic reference to the cross of Christ. Siegfried, the initiate, is invulnerable all over his body; only one spot is not invulnerable for the great initiate, the spot where Christ bears the cross. With the spread of Christianity, this spot has also become invulnerable.

In India we have a secret teaching that expresses itself rationally and symbolically, in Europe the old Germanic myth remained in the astral expression until Jesus Christ. Through Christianity, the myth has been replaced.

The task of Theosophy is to work in the sense of this spiritual development of humanity, to establish the deep connection between the ancient Germans and modern times. We cannot simply propagate the culture of the Orient; we must take into account the Germanic and Christian original culture. We must not seek the basis of the secret doctrine in Sanskrit dogmas, but we must seek the core of truth in those forms of religion that are appropriate to the European folk substance, seek what exists as an emanation of the secret doctrine in the Germanic world of legends.

That was the artist's intention when he gave a new culture by transforming the Germanic saga, that was Richard Wagner's intention when he reworked the old German sagas.

Theosophy also seeks the traces of the ancient secret teachings that live at the heart of the Germanic saga. Those who follow these traces will gradually find their way into Theosophy. However, we must not think in the same way as those who have “come so gloriously far”. For every nation has done its part in its own way. And in this sense, we in the Brotherhood must place unity and the harmony of the basic teaching above the differences in our views and presentations. If we seek the truth in every opinion and place brotherly love above the selfishness of our opinions, then we are acting in the true sense of the theosophical view of life.

Report in the “Münchner Neueste Nachrichten”, April 1906

Theosophical lectures. The theosophical speaker Dr. Rudolf Steiner gave two well-received lectures in the Prinzensaal of Café Luitpold on “Germanic and Indian Secret Doctrine” and on “Inner Development”. In the first lecture, the speaker tried to argue that the origin of legends and myths cannot be traced back to the personification of natural phenomena by the poetic fantasy of the people, as Ludwig Laistner had already suggested in “Riddle of the Sphinx” another explanation for the origin of certain myths, but that the strangely profound meaning of myths and legends point to regarding them as the symbolic expression of primal truths, which are intuitively recognized by primitive peoples themselves in images and symbols, and are also presented by the great teachers of humanity, who are initiated into the “primal secret teachings,” in images adapted to the understanding and character of the peoples of Asia, America, Africa and Europe. Thus, for example, we find the struggle of the higher nature with the lower, the spiritual battle of development, the primal fight, which takes place in the macrocosm as well as in the microcosm, and which the gods, that is, the beings who were the first to fight for spiritual development, fought in primeval times, is illustrated in the myths of the fight of the gods and heroes with the dragon. In the cycle of Teutonic myths we also find the fight against the dragon and the fight against the giants, the powers of the lower nature. For the warlike Germanic peoples, who regarded bravery as the highest virtue, the doctrine of the higher and lower self also found expression in the fact that the warrior who fell on the battlefield, elevated by his heroic death, moves up to Valhalla to meet his own higher soul, the Valkyrie, who comes to meet him. The speaker then expressed the view that the Theosophical Society in Europe had the primary task of working for an understanding of the great truths and beauties of the Germanic world of legends, as well as for a deeper understanding of the symbols of Christianity, since the forms of the Orient cannot be transferred to Europe without further ado. It must shine into the depths of the beautiful and true of the Germanic world of legends, which the great master Wagner artistically resurrected, and utilize it for her spiritualized conception of the world and life, as well as the primal truth of the Christianity brought to the Germanic world, which was destined to replace the old myths.

During the course of these lectures we shall see how in his works Wagner rose up to the gods and at the same time came down to the human beings, in order to set forth, within the human race itself, redemption and salvation.

There were Mysteries also in the North. A special being, Wotan, plays a prominent part in these Mysteries. Particularly in the countries inhabited by the Celts the last traces of the old Druid Mysteries have been preserved. In England we may still find them at the time of Queen Elizabeth.

The old sagas relate first of all of Siegfried, an initiate, who was able, after a certain number of incarnations, to give up his body to an old Atlantean initiate for a dwelling. This we may find in all the Mysteries. Even Jesus sacrificed his body to a higher individuality when he was baptized by John the Baptist.

Wotan was initiated stage by stage, in order to bring about the higher development of the Northern tribes. After the transmigration of the surviving Atlantean peoples to the desert of Gobi, a few tribes had remained behind in the North. Whereas four sub-races were continuing their development in the South, four other sub-races developed in the North. Here, too, we find four stages of evolution; the last one is the Twilight of the Gods. The northern sagas tell us about this, and these legends were conceived by the four preparatory races. Wotan passes four times through an initiation within these four sub-races, and each time he rises by one degree. He hangs upon the cross for nine days; he learns to know the things connected with Mimir's head, the representative of the first sub-race. Also in this case crucifixion brings redemption.

During his second initiation he wins Gunlöd's draught of wisdom. In the form of a serpent he must creep into a subterranean cave, where he dwells for three days before he obtains the draught. During his third initiation, corresponding to the third sub-race, he is obliged to sacrifice one of his eyes in order to win Mimir's draught of wisdom. This eye is the legendary eye of wisdom, reminding us of the one-eyed Cyclops, who are the representatives of the Lemurian race. This eye has withdrawn long ago, and modern men do not possess it; sometimes, in the case of newly-born children, a faint trace of this eye may still be seen. It is the eye of clairvoyance. Why was Wotan obliged to sacrifice it? Every root-race must recapitulate the whole course of evolution. This also applies to the third northern sub-race. Clairvoyance has to be sacrificed once again, in order that something new might arise, which appeared for the first time in Wotan. This new element is the intellectual capacity, the characteristic way in which the Europeans contemplate the world.

Wotan's fourth incarnation is Siegfried, the descendant of gods. Human initiates now take the place of gods.

Siegfried passes through an initiation. He must awaken Brunhilde, the higher consciousness, by passing through the flames, the fire of passion. In this way he experiences a catharsis, a purification. Before his purification he has killed the dragon, the lower passions. He has become invulnerable. There is only one point between the shoulders where he can be wounded. This vulnerable point symbolizes that the fourth sub-race still lacks something which Christianity alone can give. The coming of One was necessary, who was invulnerable where Siegfried was still vulnerable—the coming of the Christ, Who carries the Cross resting between his shoulders at the very point where Siegfried could be wounded to death.

Christianity was called upon to check yet another onset of the Atlanteans. The peoples led by Atli (Attilas) are of Atlantean origin. The attack of these Mongolian races must give way to Christianity, personified in Leo, the pope.

Thus the myths described the course of evolution in symbolical images.

The same thing applies to the myth of Baldur. Also in Baldur we have before us an initiate. In this myth we find that all the conditions of initiation are fulfilled. The riddle of Baldur conceals a truth. The strange position of Loki in this northern saga can only be understood if we bear in mind this fact. You know that Baldur's mother, alarmed by evil dreams, made every living being promise to do no harm to Baldur. An insignificant growth, the mistletoe, is forgotten, and out of this mistletoe, which was not bound by any promise, Loge made the arrow which he gave to the blind god Hodur, when the gods were playfully hurling arrows at Baldur. Baldur is killed by this mistletoe arrow.

You know that another evolution preceded the evolution of the earth; namely, the kingdom of the Moon. At that time matter resembled our present living substance. Some of the Moon-beings remained behind upon the Moon-stage of development, and penetrated into the new world in this form. They cannot grow upon a mineral soil, they can only grow upon a living foundation, upon another living being. The mistletoe is one of these Moon-plants. Loge is the god of the Moon. He comes from the Moon-period and is now the representative of something imperfect, of Evil. This occult connection with the Moon-period also explains Loge's double nature, male and female at the same time. As you know, the division of the sexes coincides with the Moon's exit from the common planet. The Sun-god Baldur is the head of the new creation. The new and the old creation, the kingdoms of the Moon and of the Sun collide, and Baldur, the representative of the civilisation of the Sun, is the victim. Hodur is the blind inevitable force of Nature. Guilt contains a certain progressive element. Thus Baldur had to be called into life again in the Mysteries, after having been killed by Loge through Hodur.

These are the feelings which fill our soul when we penetrate into Richard Wagner's creations.

Man comes down to the earth as a soul-being; his body is formed out of the ether-earth; the human being is not yet man and woman, and he has no idea of possession or power. The soul is referred to as water; possession, implying power, is still guarded by the surging astral forces, by the Daughters of the Rhine. The Ego, or egoism coming out of Atlantis is gradually prepared. But this human being who was originally a soul-being possessed something which he must renounce: it is love, which does not, as yet seek another being outside, but finds its satisfaction within itself. Alberich must renounce this self-contained love; the human being must attain love by becoming united with another individual being. As long as the two sexes were united, the Ring was not needed; when the human being renounced psychical love, or the two sexes in one, then the Ring had to unite externally what had thus become severed. The Ring is the union of individual human beings, the union of the sexes in the physical world. When Alberich conquers the Ring he must renounce love. Now comes the time when the human being is no longer able to work within a united sphere encompassing everything. Once upon a time, soul, spirit and body were one; now the Godhead creates the body from outside. The sexes face one another in a hostile way; the two giants Fafner and Fasolt symbolized this. The human bodies are now endowed with one sex instead of two; they create external life.

The human body is represented in every religion as a temple: the Godhead builds it from outside. The inner temple of the soul must be built by man himself ever since he has become an Ego. The creative Godhead still contains love, it is still creative in the outer temple. The myth explains this in the passage where Wotan wishes to take away the Ring from the giants, and Erda appears advising him to abstain from this. Erda is the clairvoyant collective consciousness of humanity. The god must not keep the Ring encircling what should become free, in order to unite it again upon a higher stage, when the sexes shall have become neutral. Thus the prophetic, clairvoyant power of earth-consciousness prevents Wotan from securing the Ring, which remains the property of the giants. Ever since, every human being has one sex only. (The giant represents the physical bodily structure.) Now the giants begin to build Walhalla. During a quarrel over the Ring, Fasolt is killed by Fafner. This is the contrast between male and female: one sex must first be killed within every human being: the man kills the woman, and the woman kills the man within themselves.

If you enter into the spirit of the lectures given here in the last few days you will be able to accept the idea that not only do the Beings and forces of the various Hierarchies guide and direct events upon our Earth and especially the course of human evolution, but also that the Beings of these Hierarchies themselves undergo evolution or development. We spoke of how the Beings of a particular Hierarchy intervene in order to direct the evolution of a particular race, how, for example, as normal and abnormal Spirits of Form they cooperate to organize the various races.

Now the question which confronts us is whether these spiritual Beings themselves advance to a higher rank. When we look back over the post-Atlantean times we are conscious that in the course of their development certain spiritual Beings advance to the next higher rank. Since the Atlantean catastrophe, since the beginning of the post-Atlantean evolution, we are living in an Age when certain Archangels, certain Beings of the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi, advance to the rank of the Archai or Time Spirits. This is a most interesting phenomenon, for when we observe how the Folk Spirits, or Archangels in our terminology, rise to a higher rank, only then do we have a true understanding of cosmic events. This advance in rank is connected with the fact that in late Atlantis and for some time after, the distribution of mankind, the distribution of races, has been followed by a second migration of peoples. If we wish to understand the period when the division of mankind into the five root races of which we have already spoken took place, we must look far back into early Atlantean times. If we wish to ascertain when those who became the black or Ethiopian race migrated to a particular geographical area in Africa, when those who became the Malayan race migrated to Southern Asia, then we must look back to early Atlantean times. Later on, other migrations followed upon these early migrations.

Whilst, therefore, the Earth was already colonized by the nuclei of these peoples, other peoples were dispatched to those geographical areas of the Earth already colonized. Thus we meet with a second migration in later Atlantean times. If we wish to understand the pattern and extent of the distribution of races in Europe, Africa, and America at the time of the gradual submergence of Atlantis, and the later great migration towards the end of the Atlantean epoch, when a small band first set out during the post-Atlantean epoch, then we must clearly realize that we are here dealing with that mighty stream of humanity which pushed forward into Asia, into Indian territory, and that, as has often been pointed out, the nuclei of future peoples remained behind at different points and from these nuclei were developed the various peoples of Asia, Africa and Europe. We are here concerned therefore with an earlier distribution and a later expansion, with a second wave. The purpose of this second wave was to dispatch in a West-East direction those folk communities who were each under the guidance of an Archangel. But these Archangels who were the spiritual Powers directing these tribes or folk communities were at different stages of development; in other words, some were nearer than others to the rank of a Time Spirit or Spirit of the Age. We have to look to the Far East for that movement of peoples whose Archangel was the first to attain the rank of a Time Spirit. This was the stream which merged with the original inhabitants of India and formed the ruling class of that country and so laid the foundations of the first post-Atlantean civilization after their Archangel had been promoted to be the first Time Spirit or Archai-being of the post-Atlantean civilization. Now this Time Spirit directed the sacred culture of ancient India and made it the leading culture of the first post-Atlantean epoch. Meanwhile the other peoples of Asia who were gradually developing, were for a long time simply under the direction of Archangels.

The peoples of Europe also who had remained behind during the migration from West to East had long been under the guidance of Archangels when the Archangel of India had already risen to the rank of an Archai-being who then worked through intuition upon those great teachers of India, the Holy Rishis. Through the mediation of this exalted and important Spirit the Rishis were able to fulfil their high mission in the manner already described. This Time Spirit worked on for a long time, whilst the people lying to the North of ancient India were still under the guidance of the Archangel. After the Time Spirit of India had fulfilled his mission he was promoted to lead the entire evolution of post-Atlantean humanity.

In the Old Persian epoch the Archangel became the Spirit of Personality, the Time Spirit, from whom the great Zarathustra or Zoroaster, the original Zarathustra, received his inspiration. This again is an example of an Archangel, a Folk Soul who has risen to the rank of Time Spirit. As we stated at the beginning of this lecture, we are experiencing the same situation today) namely, that the Archangels, in the course of fulfilling their mission, advance to the rank of guiding and ruling Spirits of the Age.

In the Egypto-Chaldean epoch, the Archangel of the Egyptian people and the Archangel of the Chaldean people, both rose to a higher rank. During this epoch the Archangel of the Egyptian people rose to the rank of a leading Time Spirit and took over the guidance and control of that which formerly devolved upon the Chaldean Archangel. The leader in the Egypto-Chaldean age thus became the third mighty, guiding Time Spirit who had gradually advanced beyond the rank of the Egyptian Archangel But this was also the epoch in which another important development took place, a development which ran parallel with the Egypto-Chaldean civilization and is related to the development to which we drew special attention in our last lecture.

We have seen that everything associated with the Semitic tribes assumed a special significance, and that from amongst the Semitic race Jahve or Jehovah had chosen a Semitic people to be his chosen people. Since he had chosen a particular race to be his special people, He needed at first, whilst this race was gradually developing, a kind of Archangel to act as his vice-regent. In ancient times, therefore, the evolving Semitic people was guided by an Archangel who was under the continuous inspiration of Jahve or Jehovah and afterwards this Archangel himself grew to be a Time Spirit. Apart from the ordinary evolving Time Spirits of the Old Indian, Old Persian and Old Chaldean peoples therefore, there was yet another Time Spirit who played his own special part by working within a particular people. This is a Time Spirit who, in a certain respect, appears in the mission of a Nation Spirit, a Time Spirit whom we must call the Semitic Nation Spirit. His task was of a very special kind ‘ You will understand this if you bear in mind that, in reality, this particular people was singled out from the normal course of evolution for special guidance. Through these special arrangements this people was entrusted with a mission which was of particular importance for the post-Atlantean epoch and which was distinguished from the missions of all other peoples. One can best understand this mission of the Semitic people by comparing it with the missions of the various peoples of the post-Atlantean epoch.

Mankind is subject to two spiritual currents. The one has its starting-point in monadology or pluralism¹ to give it its correct name. This theory recognizes more than one ultimate principle in ontology. Wherever you turn you will find that in some form or other the peoples of the post-Atlantean epoch started from a plurality of aspects of the Divine—the trinity of ancient India, later symbolized in the figures of Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu; the trinity of Odin, Hönir and Lödur of German mythology. You will find a trinity everywhere and this trinity subdivided into a plurality. This characteristic is peculiar not only to myths and teachings about the Gods, but also to philosophies where we meet it again in the form of monadology. This is the one current which, because it starts from pluralism or monadology can offer the greatest possible variety. It was in the post-Atlantean epoch that, starting from the farthest East in India and following a wide curve through Asia to Europe, this doctrine of pluralism which after all is expressed in Anthroposophy by our recognition of a number of widely differing Beings and Hierarchies, has been represented in the most diverse ways and in a wide variety of forms.

The polarity to pluralism was monism, the doctrine that one principle of being or ultimate substance constitutes the underlying reality of the physical world. The real inspirers of the worship of a single divinity, those who gave the impulse towards monotheism and monism are the Semitic peoples. It is natural to them, and if you recall what I said in this morning's lecture, it is their mission to represent the one God, the Monon.

He who, surveying the Universe, persisted in explaining the phenomena of the Cosmos by a single ultimate principle, a monon, would remain prisoner of his limitations. Monism or monotheism in itself can only represent an ultimate ideal; it could never lead to a real understanding of the world, to a comprehensive, concrete view of the world. Nevertheless, in the post-Atlantean age the current of monotheism also had to be represented, so that the urge, the impulse towards monotheism devolved upon a single people, the Semitic people. The monistic principle is reflected in this people by a certain rigidity or inflexibility, whilst all the other peoples, in so far as their different divinities are comprehended in a unity, receive the impulse towards monism from them. The monistic impulse has always come from the Semitic people. The other peoples are inclined to pluralism.

It is extremely important that this should be borne in mind and whoever is concerned with the continuance of the old Hebraic impulse will find the extremes of monotheism at the present day amongst the learned Rabbis, in Rabbinism. The task of this particular people is to propagate the doctrine that Single ultimate principle underlies the world. The task of all other nations, peoples and Time Spirits was analytic; to represent the one World-Principle as articulated into different Beings. In India, for example, the ultimate abstraction of the Unity underlying all things was divided into a tri-unity, just as the one God of Christianity is divided into Three Persons. The task of the other nations was to ‘analyse’ ultimate Reality and so to furnish particular aspects of it with plentiful content, to fill themselves with rich material for those representations which can apprehend phenomena with sympathetic understanding’ The task of the Semitic people was to eschew all pluralism and to devote itself to synthesis, to the doctrine of one substance. Hence the power of speculation, the power of synthetic thought which is illustrated by Cabbalism is unsurpassed precisely because it stems from this impulse.

Everything that could possibly be distilled from the unitary principle by the synthesizing activity of the ‘I’ has been distilled by the Semitic spirit in the course of thousands of years. This is the significance of the Semitic influence in the world and illustrates the polarity between pluralism and monism. Monism is not possible without pluralism. Pluralism is not possible without monism. We must recognize the necessity for both.

The language of objective fact often leads to quite different conclusions from those which are motivated by the prevailing sympathies or antipathies. Therefore we must have a clear understanding of the tasks of the individual Folk Spirits. Whereas the leaders of the several peoples in Asia and Africa had long since risen to the rank of Time Spirits or Spirits of Personality and indeed some of them were expecting to transform themselves from Time Spirits to the next higher rank, to Spirits of Form—just as, for example, that Time Spirit who was active in ancient India bad already risen in certain respects to the rank of the Spirits of Form—the several peoples of Europe were for a long time still under the direction of their individual Archangels. It was not until the fourth post-Atlantean epoch that the Archangel of ancient Greece rose above the various peoples of Europe who were still under the guidance of their Archangels to the rank of a Time Spirit. He became the leading Time Spirit of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, the Graeco-Latin epoch. Thus the Archangel of Greece advanced to the rank of an Archai-being, a Spirit of Personality. After he had become a Time Spirit, the influence of this Greek Archangel extended far and wide through Asia, Africa and Europe who looked to Hellas for their culture.

Whilst the Archangel of the Greeks had developed into an Archai-being, the Time Spirit of the Egyptians and of the Persians had advanced in evolution towards the Hierarchy of the Spirits of Form. We are now about to touch upon something exceptionally interesting in the course of post-Atlantean evolution. As a consequence of his earlier development the Greek Archangel was able to pass relatively quickly through that stage of development which qualified him for a specially prominent position as Spirit of the Age (Time Spirit). Something therefore of the greatest significance occurred in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch.

Now at that time there took place, as we know, the Mystery of Golgotha through which mankind received the Christ Impulse. This Impulse was destined in the course of the following centuries and millennia to spread gradually over the whole Earth. Without this consummation of Golgotha, without the activity of certain guiding and directing Beings from the ranks of the Hierarchies, this could not have been achieved. A most remarkable and interesting event now occurred. At a definite moment of time which coincided approximately with the descent of Christ upon Earth, the Greek Time Spirit renounced for our present epoch the possibility of rising into the Hierarchy of the Spirits of Form and became the guiding Time Spirit who then works on through the successive epochs. He became the representative guiding Spirit of exoteric Christianity, so that the Archai-being himself, the guiding Spirit of the Greeks, himself formed the vanguard of the Christ Impulse. In consequence, ancient Greece rapidly declined at the time of the expansion of Christianity because it had surrendered its guiding Time Spirit in order that he might become the leader of exoteric Christianity. The Greek Time Spirit then became the missionary, the inspirer or rather the intuiting Spirit of the expanding exoteric Christianity. Here we have a concrete example of an act of renunciation such as we have spoken of. Because the Greek Time Spirit had fulfilled his mission in the fourth post-Atlantean age so admirably, he could now advance in evolution towards a higher Hierarchy. But he renounced this possibility and by so doing became the guiding Spirit of the expanding exoteric Christianity, and in that capacity he continued to work among the various peoples.

A similar act of renunciation took place on another occasion, and this second instance is of particular interest to students of Spiritual Science. Whilst in Asia, including Egypt and Greece, the several Archangels were advancing to the rank of Time Spirits, there existed in Europe isolated peoples and tribes who were guided by their several Archangels. Thus, whilst the corresponding Archangels who had been sent in ancient times from the West towards the East had advanced to the rank of Time Spirits, there still existed in Europe an Archangel who worked in the Germanic and especially in the Celtic peoples, in those peoples who, at the time of the founding of Christianity, were still spread over a large area of Western Europe extending into Hungary, Southern Germany and the Alpine countries. These peoples had the Celtic Folk Spirit as their Archangel. The peoples belonging to the Celtic Folk Spirit also inhabited an area extending far into the North East of Europe. They were guided by an important Archangel who, soon after the Christian impulse had been bestowed on mankind, had renounced the possibility of becoming an Archai-being, a Spirit of Personality and elected to remain at the Archangel stage and to subordinate himself in future to the different Time Spirits who might arise in Europe. Hence the Celtic peoples also declined as a united people because their Archangel had made a special act of renunciation and had undertaken a special mission. This is a typical example of how, in such a case, an act of renunciation helps to initiate particular missions.

Now what became of the Archangel of the Celtic peoples after he had renounced the possibility of becoming a Spirit of Personality? He became the inspirer of esoteric Christianity. All the underlying teachings and impulses of esoteric Christianity, especially of the real, true esoteric Christianity, have their source in his inspirations. The hidden sanctuary for those who were initiated into these Mysteries was situated in Western Europe and there the spiritual impulse was imparted by this guiding Spirit who had originally undergone an important training as Archangel of the Celtic people, had renounced his promotion to a higher rank and had undertaken another mission—that of becoming the inspirer of esoteric Christianity which was destined to live on further in the Mysteries of the Holy Grail, in Rosicrucianism. Here is an example of an act of renunciation, a sacrifice on the part of one of these Beings of the Hierarchies. At the same time it offers a concrete example illustrating the significance of this sacrifice. Although this Archangel could have advanced to the rank of an Archai-being, he remained at the Archangel stage and in consequence was able to guide the important current of esoteric Christianity whose influence is destined to be furthered through the medium of the different Time Spirits. No matter how these Time Spirits may work, this esoteric Christianity will remain a living source, able to be renewed and metamorphosed ever and again under the influence of different epochs. Here then is another example illustrating an act of renunciation, whilst we, on the other hand, are witnessing in our age especially the mighty spectacle of Folk Spirits advancing to the rank of Time Spirits.

Now the various Germanic peoples of Europe had originally been guided by a single Archangel-being and were destined to come gradually under the guidance of many different Archangels in order to become differentiated. It is of course extremely difficult to speak impartially of these things without arousing jealousy and emotional prejudice. Consequently certain mysteries pertaining to this evolution can only be touched upon lightly. From among these Archangels emerged the Archai-being, the leading Time Spirit of our fifth post-Atlantean epoch, long after one of the Archangels of the Germanic peoples had undergone a certain preparatory training. The Time Spirit who was the Folk Spirit in the Graeco-Latin age became, as you know, that Time Spirit who was later concerned in the expansion of exoteric Christianity. Later Roman history was also guided by a kind of Time Spirit who had risen from the rank of Archangel of the ancient Romans and had joined forces with the Christian Time Spirit in order to coordinate their activities. Both of these were the teachers of that Archangel who guided the Germanic peoples, had been one of their guiding Archangels and had then risen to the rank of the Time Spirit of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. But much still remained to be done. It was essential that the different folk elements in the peoples of Europe should be mingled and individualized. This was only possible for the following reasons:—whereas, in Asia and Africa the Archangels had long since advanced to the rank of Time Spirits, Europe was still under the guidance of the Archangels themselves. The individual peoples, indifferent to the Time Spirits and guided by their several Folk Souls, were wholly given up to the impulses of the Folk Spirit. At the time when the Christian impulse began to pervade mankind, Europe was the scene of the simultaneous activity of many Folk Spirits, filled with a spirit of liberty, each acting independently and who therefore made it difficult for a Time Spirit of the fifth epoch to arise who could direct the several Folk Spirits. The French people, for example, was the product of the intermixture of Celts, Franks and Latins, and in consequence the entire guidance naturally followed a clearly defined pattern. It passed from the several guiding Archangels, who had been given other tasks, into the hands of others. We have already indicated what was the mission of the guiding Archangel of the Celts; in the same way we could indicate what were the missions of the Archangels of the other peoples. Hence amongst the peoples who were products of miscegenation, other Archangels appeared who took over when the various elements intermingled. Thus, over a long period of time—and even in the Middle Ages—the leadership in Central and Northern Europe was chiefly in the hands of the Archangels who were only gradually influenced by that common Time Spirit who was in the vanguard of the Christ Impulse. The several Folk Spirits in Europe frequently became the servants of the Christian Time Spirit. The European Archangels placed themselves in the service of this universal Christian Time Spirit whilst the several peoples were hardly in a position to permit any of the Archangels to advance to the rank of a Time Spirit. Starting from the twelfth century, it was not until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that the first steps were undertaken towards the development of the guiding Time Spirit of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch who still directs us today. He belongs to the great leading Time Spirits, equally with those who were the great directing Time Spirits during the Egypto-Chaldean-Babylonian, Old Persian and Indian epochs. But this Spirit of our fifth post-Atlantean epoch worked in a very unique manner. He had, in effect, to enter into a kind of compromise with one of the former Time Spirits who were active before the birth of the Christian impulse, namely, with the Time Spirit of ancient Egypt, who as we have heard, had risen in a certain respect to the rank of a Spirit of Form. Thus, our present fifth post-Atlantean epoch is really governed by a Time Spirit who in a certain way is very much subject to the influence and impulses of the Time Spirit of ancient Egypt and who is a Spirit of Form at an elementary stage.

This was the source of the many cleavages and divisions of our time. In the fifth post-Atlantean epoch our Time Spirit is striving to lift himself to the Spiritual, and to raise the fifth post-Atlantean epoch to a higher stage. But this does not exclude a tendency or inclination to materialism. According as the various Archangels, the various Folk Souls are more or less inclined towards this materialist tendency, so there emerges under the guidance of this Time Spirit of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch a more or less materialistic people who inclines the Spirit of the Age more in the direction of materialism. On the other hand an idealistic people inclines the Spirit of the Age more towards idealism.

Now from the twelfth to the sixteenth century something gradually developed, working (in a certain respect) parallel with the Christian Time Spirit—who continues the activity of the Greek Time Spirit—so that in fact, in a remarkable manner, there streamed into our culture the Christian Time Spirit united with a Time Spirit proper of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch; and again there was an influx of impulses from ancient Egypt whose Time Spirit had advanced to a certain rank among the Spirits of Form. Now precisely because such a trifolium is at work in our whole culture it has been possible for Folk Souls and cultural patterns of widely differing kinds and complexions to emerge in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. It became possible for the Time Spirit to manifest the greatest diversity. The Archangels who took their orders from the Time Spirit worked in many different ways.

Those of you who live in Scandinavia will be interested in something which we shall go into closely in our next lectures. The following question will be of particular interest to you: What form did the activity of that Archangel take who was once upon a time sent to Norway with the Nordic peoples, the Scandinavian peoples, and from whom the various Archangels of Europe, especially those of Western, Central and Northern Europe, received their inspirations? In the eyes of the world it would be regarded as the height of folly to speak of that spiritual centre on the continent of Europe which at one time radiated the most powerful spiritual impulses, the centre which was the seat of exalted Spirits before the Celtic Folk Spirit as Celtic Archangel had established a new centre in the High Castle of the Grail. The Archangel of the Northern peoples first received his mission from that place which in ancient times had been the spiritual centre of Europe. It must seem the height of folly, as I said, if we were to indicate as the central source of inspiration for the various Germanic tribes that district which now lies over Central Germany—not actually on the Earth, but hovering above it. If you were to describe an arc to include the towns of Detmold and Paderborn, you would then delimit the region from where the most exalted Spirits were sent on their several missions to Northern and Western Europe. Hence, because the great centre of spiritual inspiration was situated there, legend tells of Asgard having been actually located at this place on Earth. There, in the remote past, was the great centre of inspiration; in later years its spiritual mission was taken over by the Castle of the Grail.

The peoples of Scandinavia, with their first Archangels, were at that time endowed with quite different potentialities, potentialities which at the present time are reflected only in the peculiar configuration of Scandinavian mythology. If we compare in the occult sense, Scandinavian mythology with other mythologies, we may know that this Norse mythology depicts the native predisposition of the Archangel who was sent upon his mission to Scandinavia, that native predisposition which has retained its original form and which is peculiar to a child whose particular talents, latent gifts, etc., remain at a childlike stage. The Archangel who was sent to Scandinavia embodies those potentialities which were later expressed in the peculiar configuration of Scandinavian mythology. Here lies the signal importance of Scandinavian mythology for the understanding of the real, inner being of the Scandinavian Folk Soul. Herein, too, lies the great significance which the understanding of this mythology has for the further development of this Archangel who certainly has the potentiality to rise to the rank of an Archai-being. But to this end he must develop in a specific way those native potentialities which (in certain respects) have been overshadowed by the rising influence of that Time Spirit who was in the vanguard of exoteric Christianity. Although Germanic-Scandinavian mythology and Greek mythology are in many respects curiously alike, I must point out nevertheless that there is no other mythology which, in its peculiar composition and characteristic development, gives a deeper or clearer picture of cosmic evolution than does this Scandinavian mythology, so that this picture may serve as a preliminary sketch for the anthroposophical view of world-evolution.

Thus Germanic mythology, from the way in which it was developed out of the native powers of the Archangel, is in its pictures closely akin to the anthroposophical conception of the world such as it shall grow to be in the course of time for all mankind. The problem will be how those original, native potentialities of an Archangel can be developed after be has been nurtured by the Christian Time Spirit. These potentialities will be able to become an important element in the guiding Time Spirit when, at a later stage in the evolution of a people, this people has learned how to develop and perfect the potentialities with which it was endowed at an earlier epoch. In this connection we have only indicated an important problem, an important evolution of an European Archangel. We have indicated to what extent he has the potentiality to develop into a Time Spirit. We shall stop at this point for the moment. We shall then continue our investigations, when we shall endeavour, by analysing the configuration of the Folk Soul, to undertake an esoteric study of mythology, and a special section will be devoted to a description of the very interesting characteristics of Germanic mythology, and also of Scandinavian mythology in particular.

• 1. Note by translator—Pluralism: the theory which recognizes more than one ultimate principle in ontology. Monadology: doctrine of monads as formulated by Leibnitz. Monism: the doctrine that attempts to explain the phenomena of the Cosmos by one ultimate substance.

It has been said many times in the course of these lectures that Christianity marks the turning point of human evolution. All the religions have their raison d'etre and have been partial manifestations of the Logos, but none have changed the world so deeply as Christianity.—Those who ‘have not seen’ are those who have not known the Mysteries. Through Christianity, certain fundamental teachings of the ancient Mysteries—for instance those which dealt with morality, the immortality of the soul by Resurrection or the ‘second birth’—were given to the whole world.

Before Christianity, super-sensible truth was revealed in the rites and dramatic ritual of the Mysteries. Since then, we have believed in it as it was revealed in the Divine Personality of Christ. But in every epoch there has been a difference between esoteric truth as known to the Initiates and its exoteric form which has been adapted to the multitude and expressed in the religions. The same applies to Christianity. What is written in the Gospels is the message, the good tidings announced to all the world. But there was a more profound teaching; it is contained in the Apocalypse in the form of symbols

There is a way of reading the Apocalypse which only now can be made public. But it was practised in the Middle Ages, in the occult schools of the Rosicrucians. They paid less attention to the historic aspect of the writing, the question of its author and all the problems which occupy the minds of modern theologians who only seek to discover the outer, historical circumstances. Theology today only knows the shell of the Apocalypse and has neglected its essence and core. The Rosicrucians were concerned with the prophetic utterances, with the eternal truths.

Occultism in general is not concerned with the history of a single evolutionary cycle or period but with the inner history of human evolution as a whole. True occultism is at pains to discover the first manifestations of the life of our planetary system and the earlier stages of man's existence, but it looks forward through the millennia to a divine humanity, to a time when the Earth herself will have changed in substance and in form. Is it possible to predict the far distant future? It is indeed possible, because all that has finally to become physical in the future, already exists in germ, in archetypal form. The plan of evolution is contained in archetypal thought. Nothing comes into being in the physical world which in its broad lines has not been foreseen and prefigured in the devachanic world. Individual freedom and power of initiative depends upon the manner of the realisation of this truth.

Esoteric Christianity is not based upon vague and sentimental idealism, but upon a realisation born of a knowledge of the higher worlds. Such was the knowledge possessed by the author of the Apocalypse, the Seer of Patmos, who gave a picture of the future of humanity.

Let us try to envisage this future in the light of the cosmological principles which we have been studying in these lectures. Certain visions of the past and also of the future were revealed to the pupils in the Rosicrucian Schools and then, in order that they might interpret these visions, they were told to study the Apocalypse. We will proceed in the same way and consider how man has gradually become what he is today and what lies before him in the future. We have spoken of the ancient continent of Atlantis, and of the Atlanteans who had only a primitive consciousness of the ‘I’ towards the end of their period. The Post-Atlantean civilisations were as follows:

1. Pre-Vedic civilisation in the south of Asia and in India—the beginning of Aryan culture.
2. The epoch of Zoroaster, comprising the civilisation of ancient Persia.
3. Egyptian civilisation (including the Chaldean and Semitic). The first germs of Christianity were laid down in this epoch among the Hebrew peoples.
4. Graeco-Roman civilisation, the era of the birth of Christianity.
5. A new epoch commenced at the time of the migrations of the peoples and of the invasions. The heritage of the Graeco-Roman civilisation was taken over by the races of the North: the Celts, the Germanic peoples and the Slavs. We ourselves are living in this epoch. It is a later transformation of the Graeco-Roman culture, brought about by the invigorating impulses of new races under the influence of Christianity mingled with the leaven of the East which was brought into Europe by the Arabs. The essential mission of this epoch of civilisation is to adapt man to the physical plane to develop reason and practical logic, to immerse intelligence in physical matter so that matter may be understood and finally mastered. In this hard and difficult task which is reaching its culminating point in our own day, man has temporarily forgotten the higher worlds whence he came. If we compare our intellectuality with that of the Chaldeans, for example, it is easy to see how much we have acquired and yet how much we have lost. When a Chaldean Magus looked at the sky—which for us simply presents problems of heavenly mechanics—his feelings were quite different from ours. Whereas modern astronomy is concerned with calculations and abstractions, the Magus of old Chaldea sensed the deep harmony of the heavens as that of a living and divine Being. When he looked at Mercury, Venus, Moon or Sun, he not only perceived the physical light of these celestial bodies; he perceived their souls and he knew that his own soul was in communion with these mighty souls of the heavens. Their forces of attraction or repulsion seemed to be a marvelous symphony of divine will; the music of the macrocosm sounded in his being. Thus the ‘Music of the Spheres’ was a reality uniting man to the heavens. The superiority of the scholar in our modern age lies in a knowledge of the physical world, of mineral matter. What was once spiritual knowledge has descended to the physical world, to the world we know so well. But from now onwards we must strive to reach a knowledge of the astral world and of the world of pure Spirit by true clairvoyance.

This descent into materialism was necessary in order that the fifth epoch might fulfil its mission. It was essential that astral and spiritual clairvoyance should grow dim in order that the intellect might develop by dint of precise, minute and mathematical observation of the physical world. Physical Science must be supplemented by Spiritual Science. Here is an example: Comparisons are often made between Ptolemy's chart of the heavens and that of Copernicus. It is said that Ptolemy's chart is erroneous. Now this in itself is not correct. Both are true from different points of view. Ptolemy's chart is concerned with the astral world where the Earth is seen in the centre of the planets, including the Sun. The map of the heavens given by Copernicus was prepared from the point of view of the physical world—the Sun is at the centre of the solar system. The significance of Ptolemy's system will be recognised again in ages to come.

Our fifth epoch will be followed by another, the sixth. This sixth epoch will see the development of brotherhood among men, clairvoyance and creative power. What will Christianity be in the sixth epoch? To the priest in the Mysteries before Christ, there was harmony between science and faith. Science and faith were one and the same. When he looked up to the heavens, the priest knew that the soul was a drop of water from the celestial ocean, led down to Earth by the great streams of life flowing through space. Now that the attention of men is wholly directed to the physical world, faith has need of a refuge, of religion. Hence the separation between science and faith. Faith in the Person of Christ, of the God-Man on Earth has temporarily replaced Occult Science and the Mysteries of antiquity. But in the sixth epoch, the two streams will again unite. Mechanical science will become spiritually creative. This will be Gnosis-spiritual consciousness. This sixth epoch which will be radically different from our own, will be preceded by mighty cataclysms. It will be as spiritual as ours has been material. But the transformation can only be brought about by physical catastrophes. The sixth epoch will prepare for a seventh epoch. This seventh epoch will be the end of the Post-Atlantean civilisations and conditions of earthly life will be entirely different from those we know. At the end of the seventh epoch there will be a revolution of the elements analogous to that which put an end to Atlantis, and the subsequent eras will know a spirituality prepared by the two preceding Post-Atlantean periods.

Thus there are seven great epochs of Aryan civilisation in which the laws of evolution slowly come to expression. At first, man has within him what he later sees around him. All that is actually around us now, passed out from us in a preceding epoch when our being was still mingled with the Earth, Moon and Sun. This cosmic being from whom the man of today and all the kingdoms of nature have issued, is referred to in the Cabala as Adam-Cadmon. Adam-Cadmon embraced all the manifold aspects of man as we know him today in the various races and peoples.

All that lives today in the inner being of man, his thoughts, his feelings, will find expression in the outer world and become his surroundings. The future lies within man. He is free to make it good or evil. Just as he has already left the animal kingdom behind him, so the evil in him today will form a race of degenerate beings. In our age man can to a certain extent hide the good or evil within him. But a time will come when he will no longer be able to do so, when the good and the evil will be written in indelible characters upon his countenance, upon his body, nay even upon the very face of the Earth.

Humanity will then divide into two races. Just as today we see rocks or animals, in that future age we shall encounter beings who are wholly evil, wholly ugly. In our time it is only the clairvoyant who is able to see moral goodness or moral ugliness in human beings. But when man's very features express his karma, human beings will divide into groups of themselves, according to the stream to which they manifestly belong, according to whether the lower nature has been conquered or whether it has conquered the Spirit. This differentiation is beginning to operate little by little. When we derive understanding of the future from the past, and strive to realise the ideal of this future, its plan begins to unfold before us. A new race will come into being to be the link between the man of the present and the spiritual man of the future.

It was taught in Manicheism that from our age onwards the souls of men would begin to transmute into good the evil which will manifest in full force in the sixth epoch. In other words: human souls must be strong enough to bring good out of evil by a process of spiritual alchemy.

When the Earth begins to recapitulate the previous phases of its evolution, there will first be a re-union with the Moon, and then of this Earth-Moon with the Sun. The re-union with the Moon will mark the culminating point of evil on the Earth; the re-union with the Sun will signify, on the other hand, the advent of happiness, the reign of the ‘elect.’ Man will bear the signs of the seven great phases of the Earth. The Book with the Seven Seals, spoken of in the Apocalypse, will be opened. The Woman clothed with the Sun who has the Moon under her feet, refers to the age when the Earth will once again be united with Sun and Moon. The Trumpets of Judgment will sound for the Earth will have passed into the Devachanic condition where the ruling principle is not light but sound. The hallmark of the end of earthly existence will be that the Christ-Principle permeates all humanity. Having become like unto Christ, men will gather around Him as the hosts around the Lamb, and the great harvest of evolution will constitute the new Jerusalem.

You see, in the early days after the founding of Christianity, it spread first in the south, as far as Rome, and then later, from the 3rd, 4th, 5th centuries onwards, it spread northwards. Now let's take a look at Europe at the time when Christianity spread, that is, at the time of the founding of Christianity, or shortly thereafter. I would like to answer the question: What did Europe or our civilization look like at the time when Christianity spread?

If we imagine Asia over there (a drawing is made), Europe is like a small appendage of Asia, like a small peninsula. You will know that Europe looks like this: here we have Scandinavia, here we have the Baltic Sea; we then come to Russia. Here we have present-day Denmark. Here we come across the north coast of Germany, here we come to the Dutch area, here to the French area. Here we come to Spain, here we come across to Italy. Now we come to the areas that we already know: we come to the Adriatic Sea, we come across to Greece; then there is the Black Sea. Here we come up against Asia Minor, and across there we would come to Africa. On the other side, here we would have England with Wales, and then here Ireland, only briefly mentioned.

Now I will try to explain to you what Europe looked like at the time when Christianity was gradually spreading across Europe. Here, Europe is closed off from Asia by the Ural Mountains. We then have the mighty river, the Volga, and if we had come to these areas, which today form southern Russia, Ukraine and so on, at the time when Christianity came from the south, we would have found the Ostrogoths there, a people who later completely disappeared from this area, moved further west and then merged with other peoples in the west. So at the time when Christianity began to spread, we have the Ostrogoths here. You will see in a moment how all these peoples began to migrate at a certain point in time. But at the time when Christianity came up from the south, these peoples in Europe were settled in this place.

If you take the Danube, then further upstream you have today's Romania and today's Hungary. In these areas – today's Hungary and today's Romania – the Visigoths were located at that time. If we go further upstream, here to today's western Hungary, north of the Danube, we have the Vandals. That was the name of these peoples back then. And where today is Moravia, Bohemia and Bavaria, the so-called Suevi were located, from whom the Swabians then emerged. If we go further up – this is where the Elbe rises and then flows into the North Sea: here, everywhere, they are all Goths. But here is the Rhine, which you know well; so that would be today's Cologne – here around the Rhine, the so-called Ripuarian Franks live. Further up, where the Rhine flows into the North Sea, the Salic Franks live. And here, as far as the Elbe, the Saxons live. The Saxons got their name from the people who were to the south. They got their name because these peoples to the south noticed that they preferred or almost exclusively ate meat, and they called them “carnivores”.

Here, in these areas, the Romans had spread: even in present-day France, in present-day Spain and so on, here too were Greco-Roman peoples everywhere. Christianity spread among them first, and then it pushed north. It can be said that Christianity came to these areas earlier than to the more western areas. Among the Goths, for example, we have an old bishop: Wulfila, which means “the little wolf.” Wulfila made a Gothic translation of the Bible very early on, in the 4th century. This Bible translation is very interesting because it differs greatly from later Bible translations. It is contained in an extraordinarily valuable book that is now in the library in Uppsala, Sweden; and it can be seen from this that Christianity spread here in the east earlier.

If you follow what I have written, you will find: So there are the Greco-Roman peoples; but in these areas, in the oldest times, there is still an ancient population everywhere, an ancient population of Europe that is very interesting. This population of Europe, which I have now marked in red on the drawing, had already been pushed back more towards the western regions by the time Christianity pushed up from south to north. For originally none of these peoples were in these regions at all, but only at the time when Christianity was spreading; they were all more in the east. All these peoples are to be imagined living on the border between Asia and Europe. And what the Slavs are today are even further inside Asia.

The question now is this: if we go back to the times before the emergence of Christianity, I would have to draw this whole map of Europe with red lines; the whole of Europe was permeated by an ancient Celtic population. And all the things that are in Europe later, that I have drawn and written down for you, actually came from Asia only later – the few centuries before, the few centuries after the founding of Christianity. And that raises the question: Yes, why do these peoples migrate all at once? These peoples began to move during a certain period of world history; they pushed their way into Europe. This happened for the following reason: if you look at present-day Siberia, it is actually a huge, barren area that is very sparsely populated. Not so long ago, namely not long before the emergence of Christianity, a few centuries before, this Siberia was still much lower land, and this lower land was relatively warm. And then it rose. A country does not have to rise very much for it to become cold in the countries that were previously warm, and the lakes dry up and it becomes desolate. So nature itself caused the people to move from east to west.

The Celtic population in Europe was a very interesting population. The migrating peoples to the west encountered the Celtic population. They were a relatively peaceful population. The Celtic population in Europe still had what could be called an original form of clairvoyance, a real original form of clairvoyance. When these people set about any kind of craft, they thought: the spirits will help them with this craft. And when someone felt that he was adept at making boots – they didn't have boots yet, but things to cover their feet – he saw in his skill the help of the spirits. And he could really perceive what was helping him from the spiritual world. These ancient Celtic people still viewed their lives in such a way that they were, in a sense, “on familiar terms” with the spiritual world. And that is why these peoples also produced very beautiful things. The Celtic population also penetrated into Italy in ancient times, bringing with them many beautiful things, which helped to soften the rough Roman way of life, which had come about through the marauding people. It was precisely through the penetration of the Celtic population that the original Roman coarseness was somewhat mitigated.

So here, in ancient times, there was Celtic population throughout Europe. In the south, there was a Roman-Greek, Romance-Greek, Latin-Greek population. And, as I said, due to the elevation of Siberia, which made Siberia barren, these peoples moved over. And at the time when Christianity pushed up from south to north, the map of Europe looked like this (pointing to the drawing).

It is very strange, gentlemen: certain peculiarities of the peoples are well preserved, other peculiarities are less well preserved. For example, one must note the following: among the peoples who moved from Asia into Europe were the Huns, who had Attila as their most powerful king. But Attila is a Gothic name! For Attila means 'little father' in Gothic. Because many of the peoples that I have written down here also recognized the Hun king Attila as their king, he was given a Gothic name. But these Huns were very different from the other peoples. And that was because all these more savage peoples who came over had originally been mountain peoples in Asia. The somewhat tamer peoples who came over, like the Goths, were more the peoples of the plains. And the wild deeds of the Huns and also later the wild deeds of the Magyars came from the fact that they were originally mountain peoples in Asia.

It so happened that the Romans, more and more independent of Christianity, extended their rule northwards, and there they came into contact with these peoples who came over from Asia. Many wars broke out between the Romans and the peoples who were here in the north. Last time I already mentioned the name of a very important Roman writer, Tacitus. He wrote a lot about Roman history, but he also wrote a very great and powerful little book called “Germania”. In it, about a hundred years after Christianity had already been founded, he gave a magnificent description of the peoples who lived up there, so that in Tacitus' description, these people come to life before you. But I have already told you the other thing: Tacitus writes as one of the most educated Romans, but he did not know more about Christianity than that it was founded as a sect in Asia by a certain Christ, who was executed by the court! So Tacitus was writing in Rome at a time when Christians were still enslaved, when they still lived in their underground catacombs, actually not even that correctly. And so there was still no Christianity among these northern people.

But these northern people also had a religion back then. And it is very interesting to see what kind of religion these northern people had. Remember again, gentlemen, how religious ideas developed among southern and eastern peoples. We have spoken of the Indians; they looked primarily at the physical body, that is, at something of the human being. The Egyptians looked at the etheric body - again something of the human being. The Babylonians and Assyrians looked at the astral body – again something of the human being. The Jews saw the I in their Yahweh – again something of the human being. Only of the Greeks – and this then passed over to the Romans – must I tell you: they saw less of the human being, they turned their gaze more to nature. And the Greeks were truly the greatest observers of nature.

But these people here in the north, they have seen nothing at all of man as such, of the inner man, even less than the Greeks. It is interesting: these people here in the north have completely forgotten the inner human being, and they do not even have memories of what could be thought about the inner human being. The Greeks and Romans at least still had memories; they were neighbors of the peoples all over the Near East, of the Egyptians, Babylonians and so on; they had memories of what these ancient peoples had thought. These Nordic peoples only looked at their surroundings, only at what was outside of people. And they did not see nature, but rather the nature spirits outside of people. The ancient Greeks saw nature; these people here in the north saw the nature spirits. That is why the most beautiful stories, fairy tales, legends and myths originated precisely among these people, because they saw the spirits everywhere. The Greeks saw the tall mountain, Mount Olympus; but the gods lived on Mount Olympus. These people up here in the north did not say, “The gods live on a mountain.” Rather, they saw the god himself in the summit of the mountain, because the summit of the mountain did not appear to them as a rock. When dawn shone on the mountain top, gilding the mountain and the morning sun rising over the mountains, these peoples did not see the mountain, but this weaving of the morning sun over the mountain; that was the divine for them. It seemed ghostly to them. It was quite natural for them to see the ghostly spread over the mountains in this way.

And the Greeks built temples for the gods. Throughout Asia Minor, temples were built for the gods. These people in the north said: we will not build temples. What does it mean to build temples? It is dark inside them; but over the mountains, there is light and brightness. And the gods, that is, the spirits, must be worshiped by going up the mountain.

Now they have thought about it: Yes, when the light shines over the mountains - it comes from the sun; but the sun is most beneficial in the middle of summer, when St. John's Day, as we call it today, approaches. Then they climbed up the mountains, made a fire and celebrated their gods not in the temple, but on the high mountains. Or they said: Yes, the sunlight and the warmth of the sun go into the earth, and in spring what the sun causes comes out of the earth again. And that is why you have to worship the sun, even when it sends its power out of the earth. They felt this particularly charitably in the forests, where many trees grow out of the way the sun's power works back from the earth. That is why they worshiped their gods in forests. Not in temples, but on mountains and in forests.

And, you see, these peoples believed in spirits for everything. The ancient Celts, who were driven out by these peoples, still saw the spirits themselves. These peoples no longer saw the spirits, but in all of nature, they regarded as divine whatever shone as light, whatever was there as warmth, whatever acted as air in the clouds. And that was the old Germanic religion, the old religion, which was then driven out by Christianity.

Christianity came to these areas in two ways. First, it pushed up into southern Russia, and into these areas that are now Romania and Hungary. That is where Wulfila translated the Bible. A Christianity emerged that was much more genuine than the Christianity that spread everywhere from Rome by the second route. From Rome, Christianity spread more as domination. And one can say: if Christianity, as it arose here in the East through Russia, in the time when there was no Slavic population, if Christianity had spread there, it would have become quite different; it would have become more inward, because it would have had much more Asian character. The Asian character is an inward one. And the Christianity that spread from Rome took on more of an external form, which then became dead in the cult because the meaning of the cult was no longer recognized. I have spoken to you about the monstrance and the Santissimum, which actually represents the sun and the moon – but that was covered up, it was no longer accepted. And so a spiritless cult has spread. This spiritless cult was then carried over to Constantinople by a spiritless Caesar; the city of Constantinople was founded. And in later times, the changed Christianity also spread to the other countries.

The Christianity that is in Wulfila's translation of the Bible, for example, has completely disappeared from Europe. For it is more the cultic Christianity, the externalities, that spread from here. And in the East, when the Slavs came, what was more cultic, which has a very little inwardness, spread even more.

Now, what I have told you about the religious beliefs of these peoples later underwent a certain change. It is always the case among people that they originally know what it is about; then they no longer know what it is about, and it remains only a memory. It remains something external. And so, from the gods that people saw, from the spirits everywhere in nature, three main deities were formed: Wotan, who was actually imagined to be something like light and air floating over everything. Wotan was worshipped, for example, when there was a heavy storm; then it was said: Wotan is in the wind, Wotan is blowing in the wind.

It was a peculiarity of these peoples that they expressed in their language what they perceived in nature. That is right, they worshipped Wotan as blowing in the wind. Do you feel when I say: Wotan blows in the wind - the three w's? It was something terrible for these people when a storm came and they imitated this stormy weather by saying: Wotan blows in the wind! - That is how we would say it today, but it was very similar in the old language.

And when summer came and people saw lightning and heard thunder during a storm, they also saw spiritual things in it. They imitated this in language, and they called the spirit that rolls in the thunder Donar: Donar roars in thunder. The fact that this was in the language shows that these people were connected to the outside world. The Greeks were not so strongly connected with the outside world. The Greeks sought this more in rhythm than in the formation of language. In these Nordic peoples, it was already in the language itself.

And when, for example, these peoples crossed over to Europe and first encountered the Celts, constant fighting and wars broke out. Warring was something that was always there in those days when Christianity was spreading. Just as the spiritual was seen in the blowing wind and the rolling thunder, so it was also seen in the storm of battle. It was the case that the people had shields and with these shields in closed rows they stormed forward in crowds. So they still stormed forward when they came into the fight with the Romans. And when the Romans threw themselves against them and these northern tribes stormed down, then the Romans heard above all a terrible shouting: a thousand throats shouted into their shields as they charged forward. And they feared much more than the Germanic swords what was charging towards them with terrible shouting. And if you were to storm in shouting something similar to what these peoples shouted into their shields, if you wanted to imitate that today, then you would have to say it sounded like: Ziu zwingt Zwist! Ziu zwingt Zwist! - Ziu was the spirit of war; they believed that he was storming ahead with them. When such a Germanic tribe stormed forward, they felt: There is a spiritual being among them that forces discord. “Zwist” is war. Ziu forces discord! - and that now rushed into the shields. And the Romans heard this muffled: Ziu forces discord! Ziu forces discord! and it rushed over the Romans' heads. As I said, they were terribly afraid of that, more than of all the bows and arrows and so on. It was really something in which the spiritual lived in the courage, in the bellicosity of these people.

You see, if these people were to rise again as they were then – of course they rise again, since people re-embody themselves, but they have forgotten the story – but if they were to rise again as they were then and saw the present population, well, they would put all the sleepyheads in their place! Because they would say: It's not right for a person to walk around as a sleepyhead! They should put on a nightcap and go to bed. They had a completely different outlook on life, they were mobile.

Then, of course, there were also times when these peoples could not wage war. But, gentlemen, when they were not waging war, they had bearskins, on which they lay, and then they drank – they drank terribly. That was the second occupation. Well, in those days it was considered a virtue; after all, it was not quite as dangerous a drink as it is today, it was a relatively harmless drink brewed from all sorts of herbs. Beer developed from it later, but very differently, of course. But these peoples drank it in large quantities. They only felt like humans when this mead, this beer-like, sweetish drink, went sweetly through their whole body. Sometimes you still come across people in whom you can see how something like this lives in them when they feel a bit like descendants of these ancient Germans. Once I met a German poet in Weimar who drank almost as much as the ancient Germans! But of course he drank beer. The ancient Germans drank this mead-like drink. We got to talking, and I said to him: Yes, it's actually impossible for someone to be so thirsty! - And he said: Yes, thirst – when I'm thirsty, I drink water; but when I'm not thirsty, I drink beer. When I drink beer, I don't drink it for thirst, I drink it for fun! And so it was with these Teutons: they became merry and energetic when the mead-like sweet liquid ran through their limbs as they lay on their bearskins.

The third main occupation was hunting. And agriculture was actually practised rather incidentally by the subjugated peoples of that time. When such a people spread out, it was the case that others were subjugated; they then had to do the farming. These were unfree people. And when war came, they had to join; they had to carry the weapons and so on. Of course, in those days there was a great difference between the free population and the unfree. The free population, who waged war, hunted, and drank on the bearskins, came together to order matters. And when they came together, they discussed matters of a judicial or administrative nature and so on, everything that was necessary. Nothing was written down, because they could not write in those days. Everything was only discussed orally. And there were no cities; people lived scattered in villages. They always formed a kind of community of a hundred and a hundred villages, so about a hundred villages together. They then belonged together; they were called a hundred-ship. And in turn, large associations of hundred-ships were then a district. And the hundred-ships had their assemblies, the districts had their assemblies. For those people who were allowed to come together, for the free, there was actually quite a bit of democracy in this respect. And what was held there was not called an imperial council, not a parliament – these are words that came later. It was called a thing because a specific day was set for the meeting, and anything that was not given a specific name was called a thing. You can still hear it today when you hear English people talking about something and they can't think of the name straight away, they always say: thing = thing. The word “thing” has already been discredited today. I once got into trouble because of that. I was once commissioned to draft a resolution that had been written, and I put “thing” into this resolution; and the chairman at the time, who was a very famous astronomer, held it against me terribly because it is such a terrible word in our time; you cannot use it where serious people come together! But in the old days it was called a thing. People didn't say they were going to the Reichstag, they said they were going to the Tageding. And if someone talked, they were said to be vertageding the matter. And you see, the word 'defend' was formed from the word 'vertagedingen'. This is how words are formed later: defend originated from vertagedingen. Today, the word “defender” is only used in the context of court. Here in Switzerland, we don't say “defender”, but “ Fürsprech”, but everywhere else they say “defender”. This is how these people lived with their gods and spirits among themselves. And then the southern peoples brought Christianity to these people.

But again, in the West, Christianity arose in two ways. It was partly brought up directly from Rome; but there was another line in which Christianity spread, and that was this: from Asia, more across the very southern areas here, where the Latin-Roman element has not gained much influence, across Spain to Ireland. And in Ireland, in the first centuries of Christianity, there was a very pure way of spreading Christianity. And this way of spreading Christianity in Ireland also spread to Wales. And from there, Christian missionaries also moved into Europe. They brought Christianity with them, in part; in part, it came up from Rome.

You see, gentlemen, I told you that in the monasteries, for example, and even at the first universities, much of the old science was still available, so that with Christianity the old science was connected. What has been preserved of the ancient wisdom of the stars, which later disappeared completely in Europe, actually all came from Ireland. From Rome, basically, only the cult spread. And only later, when Central Europe turned to the gospel, did the gospel join the cult. But much of what came from Ireland lived among the people. You see, in Europe, Christianity has gradually become completely absorbed into secular rule. And the good elements of Christianity that were present up here, where the Gothic Bible translation by Wulfila was created, and those that came over from Ireland, have actually more or less completely disappeared later on. They were still present in many ways in the Middle Ages, but then more or less completely disappeared. You see, from Rome, they actually proceeded very cleverly. In these peoples, who I have written down here for you and who were originally pushed by nature itself to migrate from Asia to Europe – they could not stay there because the land had become barren – but a certain wanderlust took hold. And it is strange what happens there.

Take the Elbe, for example. Up here on the Elbe lived a people in the time just after the advent of Christianity: they were the Lombards. They lived to the northeast of the Saxons, on the Elbe. Soon after, two centuries later, we find these same Lombards down there on the Po, in Italy! So the Lombards migrated over here. We find the Goths, the Ostrogoths, here on the Black Sea at a time when Christianity had not yet arrived but had already been established. Soon after, a few centuries later, we find them here, where the Vandals and the Visigoths used to be. The Visigoths migrated further west. We find the Visigoths here in Spain after some time. We find the Vandals here on the Danube. A few centuries later, the Vandals were no longer in Europe at all, but over there in Africa, opposite Italy. These peoples were now migrating. And just as Christianity was spreading, these peoples were migrating; they were pushing more and more to the west. The Slavs came much later.

And what happened in the West? The Romans had already achieved world domination when Christianity emerged. The Romans actually behaved extremely shrewdly. At the time when these peoples came over to the west and pushed against the Romans, the Romans were actually already quite emaciated, weak, rather ghastly fellows, and they couldn't really do much other than shake and tremble with their lower legs when this: Ziu forces discord! rolled into the shields from up there. Then they trembled like aspen leaves. But in their heads they were smart, proud, arrogant, haughty.

Now, these peoples were necessarily different. There was, of course, a big difference: these people down there had their lands, their fields, were settled, had something behind them. These peoples up there didn't care much about location; they migrated. And so it came about that the Romans often took in these peoples who were storming south. They gave them land, for the Romans had land in abundance everywhere. They gave them land. And so it came about that these peoples changed from hunting and war to agriculture, to farming. But how did it happen when the Romans gave them land? Yes, these Germanic peoples now had the land; they could dig up the fields. They could do that, but the Romans did the administration! In this way, the Romans gradually made themselves rulers. And this rule was strongest here in the west. In the area that was later populated by Germans, the people resisted for a long time. But people like the Goths, they moved into Italy, came together with the people from there, and became dependent. Yes, the Roman-Latin population was clever. What did they do? Well, they said: If we carry the sword, it is no longer right. They had become emaciated guys. What did they do? They made warriors out of the people who came in! When the Romans wanted to wage war, they waged it with the Germans, so they were the warriors! They were given their fields, but in return they had to go to war. Those who had remained at the top as Germanic people were at war with their own former warriors! The Romans waged war against them under the leadership of the Germanic people! And so, in the early days when Christianity spread, the wars that were actually waged by the southern population, the Roman population, were waged with the help of the Germanic people themselves, who had been absorbed by them. At most, only the leaders of the Roman armies were Romans. The mass of the soldiers were actually Germanic peoples who had become Roman. And now the task was to introduce the religious element from Rome in a way that would appeal to these people. In these earliest times, people were much more attached to their religion than they were later. And so, for example, the following came about. You see, these people saw light and air everywhere in nature as the spiritual. They felt it hard when the snow came in October, November, when the snow covered the earth and then actually all spiritual had to disappear. On the other hand, they particularly revered the time when our Christmas falls today. Then they felt: Now the sun is coming again. It was the winter solstice. The sun turned back to the people. And so a spiritualized nature was still very much what they assumed in these peoples.

The Romans, who had already adopted Christianity in their system of government, left this solstice festival to the Germans. But they said: We do not celebrate the solstice here, but the birth of Christ. And so the Germans were only able to continue celebrating their festival at the same time as they had previously done so, with a different meaning.

Now, the ancient Germans saw some kind of spirit under every significant tree, one might say. The Romans made a saint out of a spirit! And so they basically re-baptized everything that was contained in the old pagan religion. This went largely unnoticed by the people, and in this form, Christianity was actually spread among the Germanic peoples. Festivities such as those celebrating the return of the sun and so on were observed precisely because the ancient Germans loved celebrating with the gods in the open air, in the mountains and forests.

So we can say that in more recent times, since the founding of Christianity, it has been cunning that has been most prevalent in Rome. And basically, Europe has been ruled by cunning for many centuries – by Roman cunning. It has gone so far that the Romans have always preserved the old Latin language in schools, and the vernacular was actually only spoken among the people. When the Romans introduced Christianity and science, they did not speak in the vernacular – that did not come until the 18th century – but they presented science everywhere in Latin. For a long time, Romanism was also noticeable in its original form.

But now, what happened in the West, through Spain, France and into England? You see, there Romanism really remained alive. That is why the language in which Romanism lives on came into being. Here, in Central Europe, the Germanic element was more dominant. That is where the Germanic languages originated. Over here, the Romance element triumphed; that is where the Romance languages came into being. But in terms of their origin, all these people who were there, both those who migrated to Spain and those who migrated to Italy, are actually Germanic. I have written down the Ripuarian Franks and the Salian Franks, who later moved over there – they were all Germanic tribes that settled in France. And the Romance language spread like a cloud over these Franks who moved into France, and became French or Spanish. The old Latin lives on in a modified form.

Only further east, from the Rhine onwards, did the people as a people say to themselves: Well, the scholars in there in the schools, with their wigs, they can speak Latin, and those who want to become priests can listen to them; but the people have kept the language. And that is how the antagonism arose that still troubles Europe today, this antagonism between Central Europe and Western Europe.

From the east, the Slavs gradually came. I had to tell you: these peoples come over to the west, where some of them disappear, some of them also adopt another language, and so on. Then the Slavs came, settled in the east of Europe, and in some places advanced quite far. Here, for example, the old Germanic element mixed with the Slavic element; for certain reasons, which I will explain to you next time, the Slavs in the east over there got the name “Russians”; on the other hand, those who now moved into these areas, they disappeared among the Germanic peoples. A blood mixture remained. And that is how the Borussians came into being, those who are the vanguard of the Russians. Borussians then became “Prussians”! That is just the transformed word. There is a lot of Slavic blood in it. While the Slavs themselves, when they remain behind, are more passive, more of a quiet population, when they absorb other blood, they become combative! This belligerence, which was present in ancient Germanic peoples, then passed over to them. And so what was in Prussia became a rather belligerent population; and what migrated to the west, the Czech population, actually became a rather belligerent population as well.

And so Europe stirred itself up, I would say. And into this porridge Christianity was added. Well, we will continue with that next time.

The picture of Central Europe has altered fundamentally between, say, the year 1 and the 6th century A.D. This change involves a complete replacement of the peoples who lived on the Weichsel, the Oder and the Elbe, by others; hence it is very difficult for us to picture those races, to learn anything about their customs and way of living. We must find a way of our own to form such a picture. Tacitus, in his Germania, gives descriptions of the country at that time. No other records have been preserved to us of those days, and we must enlist the help of the North Germanic legends to complete the account. What Tacitus says about these races is very significant, in contrast to the Roman conception of the conditions of those days. In the opinion of Tacitus, these peoples were the original inhabitants of that land, for he cannot imagine that any other races would be able to get on in that inhospitable regiion. He mentions the tribes which dwell on the Rhine, the Lippe, the Weser, the Danube and in Brandenburg; these alone are known to him. He tells of characteristic features in them, and on account of their similarity groups them together under the name Germani. They, however, felt themselves to be different tribes, and the struggles with the Romans, they were called may different names, of which only a few, such as the Suevi, Longobards, Frisians, etc. have been preserved to later days

They were descended originally from one, Tuisco, to whom they pay divine homage, expressing it in songs of battle. Tuisco's son was Mannus, after whose three sons they named their chief tribes: the Ingavones, Istavones and Herminones If we compare this information of Tacitus' with the myths of another Aryan race, we find in Sanscrit, the sacred language of the Hindus, the same disignation Manu, for their supreme leader. This indicates a tribal relationship. Indeed, we can follow like deities in all the Indo-Germanic tribes. Thus Tacitus relates that the hero of Greek legend, Hercules, was also honoured by the Germani, bearing among them the name of Irmin. We know that there existed among the southern Indo-Germanic tribes a legend which found artistic elaboration in Greece: The story of Odysseus. Tacitus found, in the neighbourhood of the Rhine, a place of worship dedicated to Odysseus and his farther Laertes. So we see that the culture of the Germani at this epoch was akin to the culture we meet with in Greece in the 8th and 9th centuries B.C. Thus in Greece we see later the development of a culture which in Germany has remained stationary at a lower level.

All this points to an original relationship between these races. The peoples who lived, later in Germany, Greece and Russia, probably had their earlier homeland north of the Black Sea. From there one tribe wandered to Greece, another to Rome, and a third towards the west; the original culture of all these peoples was maintained in this form by the Germani, and further developed by the Celts. Tacitus tells us nothing of the manners and customs of that remarkable race. By the songs and sagas collected later in Iceland, in the Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda, we must conclude that what that race produced, persisted there. Tacitus tells us further of the customs of the Germans in their tribal assemblies, which, however, we must picture as deliberations of very small communities. To these assemblies came all the warriors of that province; the consultations were carried on to the accompaniment of beer and mead, and we are told that the old Germans made their resolutions when drunk in the evening, but revised them next morning when they were sober, and not until then were the decisions valid. As we learn from the Iliad, the same custom existed among the Persians. So we must conclude that there was an original Aryan stem, and hence a relationship between all these races.

Among the Germanic races in the north, a great similarity is specially evident in the characteristic forms of their religion, which do, indeed, fundamentally resemble those of the south, and yet show a much greater conformity with those of the Persians. According to the northern Germani, there were originally two kingdoms, separated from each other by an abyss: a kingdom of fire, Muspelheim, and a kingdom of ice, Niflheim. The sparks which flew over from Muspelheim, gave rise, in the abyss, to the first race of giants, of whom Ymir was the most outstanding. Then arose the Cow, Audhumbe, which was overlaid by the ice, and brought forth a mighty human form. From this human form sprang the Gods: Woten, Wile and We, whose names mean Reason, Will and Kindness. This second race of Gods was called Asen. Its descent was traced to the first race of giants.

Here too there occurs an important connection between the languages, for Asuras, the name of the Persian gods, suggests the sound Asen, again indicating a relationship connecting all these races. We find another important indication in an ancient Persian formula or poem of exorcism, which has come down to us. It points to changes in the mind of the race, to ancient Gods, deposed and supplanted by others. The service of the Devas was forsworn, the service of the Asuras confirmed. Here appears similarity to the giants, who were overcome by the Asen.

Moreover, the North Germanic legend tells how the three Gods found an ash and an alder on the seashore, and from them created the human race. The Persian myth, too, makes the human race come forth from a tree. We find echoes of these myths among the Jews, in the story of the Tree of Life in Paradise. Thus we see, from Persia to Scandinavia, by way of Palestine, traces of similar mythical ideas.

So we have proved a common fundamental character among certain races. At the same time there are again differences between a southern and a northern branch of the common main stock. To the southern branch belong the Greeks, Latins, and Hindus; to the northern, the Persian and Germaninc tribes. Let us see then what sort of races we have to do with in Germany now. As they confront us, we are bound to believe that they have traits of character which the Greeks and Italians have long cast off, and indeed, the Greeks after, the Romans during the conquest of their empire; whereas these northern peoples developed their essential characteristics and qualities before that conquest. They were the original, unpolished qualities, which these races had preserved. They had not experienced that transition-stage, through which, in the meanwhile, the southern races had passed. Hence we have to do here with the clash of a race which has remained conservative, against one which, although related to it, has attained a greater height of culture.

At the time of the rise of Christianity, which was to acquire so great a significance for them, described by the Greeks in the works of Homer. They had not cooperated in the advance of culture and civilisation which lay between. In the first centuries A.D., Tacitus describes the Germani of the borderlands of the Danube, the Rhine and the Lippe. These races were characterised by the roving instinct, love of liberty, and delight in hunting and war. Domestic matters lay in the hands of women. Here we meet with a civilisation and a form of society which had long disappeared from among the Greeks, and could only be preserved where the several members of a tribe were still bound to one another by blood relationships. Hence teh many tribes. In those who were conscious of their derivation from the same family—for they were regularised families, not hordes—tribal kinship was evolved from the separate families. Thus the wars which they waged were almost always against foreign blood.

Towards the end of the 4th, and during the 5th century, we see all these races compelled to change their places of abode, and to seek new ones.

The epoch of the folk migrations had begun. The Huns broke in and therewith knowledge faded from among the peoples living in the east—the Gepids, etc., and above all, the Goths. This race, divided into the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths, had already accepted Christianity. It is a race of special importance for us, just because of the way it apprehended Christianity. Whereas the Franks, who later spread Christianity from west to east, thrust it upon other races with force, the Goths were full of tolerance. The high level of culture which they had already attained is vouched for by the circumstances that we owe to a Gothic bishop, Ulfias or Wulfila, the first translation of the Bible, the so-called Silver Codex, which is preserved in Upsula.

These Goths, whose civilisation came from the east, held a different form of Christianity from those whose conversion issued later from the west. They were not like the Franks who, in the days of Charlemagne, thrust Christianity upon the Saxons by force of arms. (All these eastern Germanic tribes professed the Arian belief, a point of view which, at the Council of Nicea, was declared heretical and persecuted by the supporters of Athanasius).

The Arian Christians maintained that God dwells in the bosom of every man. Hence the Goths believed in the deification of man, as Christ, Who had gone before, showed to men. This viewpoint was allied with a deep cultivation of feeling. The Goths had the greatest possible tolerance for every other form of religion. No compromise was possible between two Christian creeds which were so different from each other. As absolute tolerance was a characteristic of these Goths; it never occurred to them to force a belief on anyone else; thus we are at once confronted with the difference in the way Charlemagne and Clovis, supporters of the Athanasian profession of faith, exploited Christianity for political purposes.

The Arians saw in Christ a man highly developed above all other men, but a man among men. Their Christ belonged to humanity and dwelt in the human breast. The Christ of the Athanasian Christians is God Himself, throned high above men.

Athanasiaus won the victory, and the evolution of culture was essentially influenced by it.

The Germani were hemmed in on all sides by foreign races; in the south and west by the Romans and Gauls (Celto-Germanic tribes); while from the east new encroachments of peoples continually took place. The first Christian Germanic tribes had neer known anything but absolute tolerance; the Christian Franks brought in a compulsory Christianity. This led to a change of temperament. On the evolution of this section of the Germani depended essentially the further evolution of culture. A radical change of legal conditions had gradually come about.

To a certain extent calm and fixity set in with the end of the fifth century. Through continual reinforcements from the east, larger tribal communities had been formed from the above mentioned tribes, who were for ever attacking one another, and of whom even the names (Chatten, Frisians, etc.) have only in a few cases been preserved. Through the loosening of the old blood bonds, another motive for clinging together was created. In place of the blood bond, appeared the bond which allied a man with the ground and soil that he tilled.

The connection together of tribes became equivalent to their connection with places. The village community arose. It was no longer the consciousness of blood relationship, but the connection with the soil that bound several members together. This led to a metamorphosis of the conditions of property.

Originally all property was held in common and private property acquired prominence. Still, everything which could be common property (forest, pasturage, water, etc.) remained so, for the time being. Then an intermediate stage grew up between common and private property, the so-called “hide” of land. The use of this half-private, half-common property served as a basis to determine the so-called free inhabitants of the hide, the community; and in those early days, almost all the dwellers within these bounds were free.

This stands in stark contrast to actual private property: weapons, household utensils, garments, gardens, cattle, etc., everything which the individual has personally acquired. This limitation is expressed in the fact that private property is closely bound up with the personality of the possessor That is why a dead man had his weapons, horses, dogs, etc. buried with him in his grave. It is an echo of this ancient custom when, even today, at the funeral of a prince, his orders, crown, etc. are carried after him, and his horse is led behind.

With the Chinese, too, a race which in many ways shows similarity with the ancient Germani, a dead man has the objects which belonged to him personally, buried with him, a condition carried out today, at any rate with paper models.

Thus we see the transition from the tribal, to the village community, which has developed from certain relationships, from this we understand further metamorphoses. We understand why Tacitus does not speak of the Asen, but of Tuisco and his son Mannus. He speaks of races which have not yet reached to a higher level of culture. Other races came from the north, and brought with them ideas which they developed there. These fitted in to the higher stages of culture which had meantime been reached. How far does a man get with the ideas that confront us in Tuisco or Mannus? He remains with the human being, does not go beyond himself. It would have been useless to introduce the service of Wotan to these tribes. The service of Wotan goes out into the universal; man seeks his origin in the bosom of Nature. It was only in the later stage of civilisation that man could rise to this religious level. When he has settled down, he understands his connection with Nature. Thus we have seen how the primitive culture of the southern Germani was influenced from the north, and how, in the meantime, high civilisations had developed among related races in the south.

We shall see further on, under what conditions the southern culture was spread among the Germani. An interesting survey is presented to us there; the deep-seated kinship of different races. We see the external influences which alter the character. Cause and effect become clear to us.

And so we learn to understand the present from the past. Eternal variability governs not only Nature, but History. How could we face the future with confident courage, if we did not know that the present also changes, that we can shape it to our liking, that here too the poet's words hold good?

The old gives way, Time alters all;
And new life blossoms from the ruins.

In the course of these lectures we have said repeatedly that Christianity constitutes the decisive midpoint of human evolution. All religions have their right to exist—they were partial revelations of the Logos—but none has changed the face of the world as much as Christianity. One can feel this influence in the words of John's Gospel, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” (John 20:29) The words, “those who have not seen,” refer to those people who had no knowledge of the mystery religions. An essential part of the ancient mysteries is made public through Christianity, for example, the most important commandments concerning morality, and the teaching concerning the immortality of the soul through resurrection or rebirth.

Before Christianity, one could see super-sensible truth in the revelations, rites, and dramatic presentations of the mysteries. Now, however, one can believe in the super-sensible thanks to the divine person of Christ. There had always been a difference between the esoteric truth known to initiates, and its exoteric form—appropriate for the great masses—which came to expression through the various religions. The same holds true for Christianity. What is found in the Gospels is the new good tidings, promulgated for all to hear. But there was a deeper teaching. It is contained in the Apocalypse in the form of symbols.

There is a way to read the Apocalypse that can be made public only in our time. It was cultivated in the Middle Ages in the occult schools of the Rosicrucians. At that time historical questions concerning the book were considered unimportant. These were questions concerning its composition and the identity of the author; in short, all that which occupies the sole interest of theologians today, who seek nothing more than historical facts in this book. Modern critical theology knows only the external shell of this book and ignores the kernel. The Rosicrucians stayed with the prophetic aspect, the eternal truth of the book.

Occultism is not usually concerned with the history of a single century or a single era, but rather with the inner history of human evolution as a whole. This is true when it delves into the first manifestations of our planetary system, when it looks into the distant past at the vegetative and animal conditions of humanity, and when its perspective expands over millions of years forward to a future when humanity will have become divine. The earth itself will have changed then both in form and substance. But how can the future be guessed? Is prophecy really possible? It is possible because all that is to take place physically in the future already exists in seed form in the womb of the archetypes whose thoughts form the plan for our evolution. Nothing appears on the physical plane that was not already planned and preformed in general outline in the region of devachan. Nothing happens in the depths that did not exist before in the heights. That is the way things are realized. They depend upon the freedom and initiative of the individual.

Esoteric Christianity is not based on vague and sentimental idealism but rather on a concrete ideal that originates in knowledge of higher worlds. This is the knowledge that the writer of the Apocalypse had, the great seer of Patmos, who sketched the future of humankind in Christian perspective.

Let us consider this future according to the laws of world creation just described. The Rosicrucians first revealed to their pupils some visions from the past and the future. Then the pupils were given the Apocalypse to interpret these visions. Let us do the same and observe how humanity has become what it is, and what future will open for it.

We have, for example, spoken of the ancient Atlantean continent and of the Atlanteans whose etheric body was far more developed than their physical body. Their preliminary consciousness of self, their I-consciousness, came to them only at the end of their culture. The successive post-Atlantean cultures were: First, the pre-Vedantic culture in southern Asia, in India. That was the beginning of the Aryan cultures; second, the epoch of Zarathustra, including the culture of ancient Persia; third, the Egyptian culture, the epoch of Hermes, to which are attached the Chaldean and Semitic cultures. The first seeds of Christianity were sown during this age in the womb of the Hebrew peoples; fourth, the Greco-Latin cultural epoch that experienced the birth of Christianity; and fifth, a new epoch was prepared at the time of the mass migrations and wars of conquest in the fourth through the sixth centuries.

The legacy of the Greco-Latin culture was taken over by the northern races: Celts, Germans, and Slavs. This is the epoch in which we are now still living. It is a slow transformation of the Greco-Latin cultural heritage brought about through the powerful element of the new peoples under the mighty impulse of Christianity. This impulse has also been mixed with the leaven of the East brought to Europe through the Arabs. The actual goal of this cultural epoch is to adapt the human being fully to the physical plane. This occurs when our reason, our practical commonsense is developed and our intellect delves into physical matter in order to understand and master it. In the course of this hard work, this astonishing achievement that has culminated in our time, human beings have momentarily forgotten the higher worlds of their origin. By comparing our spiritual soul constitution with that of the Chaldeans, for example, it is easy to see what we have won and what we have lost. When Chaldean magicians observed the heavens, which present for us nothing more than a problem in celestial mechanics, they had an entirely different idea, an entirely different feeling, one could say, a totally different experience than we. Where a modern astronomer sees nothing more than a soulless machine, the ancient magicians felt the harmony of the heavens depths as a divine, living being. When they observed Mercury, Venus, the moon, or the sun, they saw not only the physical light of these heavenly bodies, they perceived the planets' souls as belonging to living beings, and they felt their own souls in connection with these great beings of the firmament. They perceived the influence of heavenly bodies as attraction and repulsion, like a wonderful concert of streaming, flowing divine will; and the symphony of the cosmos sounded forth in the magicians like a harmonious echo of the human microcosm. In this way the music of the spheres was a reality that united human beings with heaven.

The superiority of the modern scholar is rooted in knowledge of the physical world, of matter. Spiritual science has descended to the physical plane we know so well. However, we must now be concerned with again achieving knowledge of the astral plane through clairvoyance.

This descent into matter was necessary for the fifth epoch to fulfill its mission. Astral and spiritual clairvoyance had to be veiled so that the intellect could develop itself on the field of the sense world through minute, mathematical observation of the physical world.

Now we must supplement natural science with spiritual science. Here is an example: Ptolemy's map of the heavens is usually placed next to that of Copernicus and then the former is declared to be false. This is, however, not true. They are equally justified. Ptolemy's map is concerned with the astral plane wherein the earth forms the center point of the planets and the sun is itself a planet. Copernicus's map is concerned with the physical plane where the sun is in the middle. All truths are relative according to time and place. Ptolemy's system will be rehabilitated in an epoch yet to come.

After our fifth epoch another will come, the sixth, which will be related to ours as a spiritually minded soul is related to a rationally inclined soul. This epoch will bring genius, clairvoyance, the creative spirit, to development. How will Christianity appear in the sixth epoch? There was a harmonious union of science and faith for the ancient priests of the pre-Christian age. Science and faith were one and the same thing. When the ancient priests observed the firmament they knew and felt that the soul was a drop of water that had fallen from the heavenly ocean and had been led down to earth by immeasurable rivers of life that flow through space. Today, when our sight is directed only to the physical world, faith needs a free space, a religion. For this reason science and faith are separated. The faithful reverence of the person of Christ, the god of the human being on the earth, has for a certain time taken the place of occult science and the mysteries. But the two streams will be united in the sixth epoch. The mechanical science of the physical plane will be elevated to the heights of spiritual creative power. That will be gnosis or spiritual knowledge. This sixth epoch will be radically different from ours. Great, tumultuous catastrophes will precede it, for the sixth epoch will be just as spiritual as ours is materialistic, but such a transformation can only occur through great, physical upheavals. Everything that will be formed in the course of the sixth epoch will call into existence the possibility of a seventh epoch which itself will form the end of these post-Atlantean cultures and will know completely different conditions of life from our own. This seventh epoch will end with a revolution of the elements, similar to the one that brought an end to the Atlantean continent. The condition of the earth that will then appear will have a spirituality prepared through the last two post-Atlantean epochs.

The Aryan cultures encompass seven great epochs. We see the laws of evolution slowly unfolding. Human beings always carry within themselves what they will see around them in future times. All that presently exists around us actually came forth from us in preceding ages when our being was still united with the earth, the moon, and the sun. This cosmic being, from which the present human being together with all the kingdoms of nature have arisen, is called in the Kabbala, “Adam Kadmon.” All of the manifold forms of men and women presently represented by ethnic groups and races were contained in this human archetype.

What human beings possess today as their inner soul life, their thoughts, their feelings, will similarly be revealed externally and become the environment in which people live. The future resides in the hearts of men and women. The choice is ours to decide for a future of good or of evil. Just as it is true that the human being once left behind something that then became the world of animals, so too, what is evil in the human being will one day form a kind of degenerate humanity. At the present time we can more or less hide the good or evil within us. A day will come when we can no longer do this, when the good or the evil will be written indelibly on our forehead, on our body, and even on the face of the earth. Humanity will then be split into two races. In the same way that we encounter boulders or animals today, in the future we will encounter beings of pure evil and ugliness. When a human being's facial features become an expression of that individual's karma, then people will separate themselves according to the stream in which they apparently belong. Everything depends on whether human beings have conquered the lower nature within them or whether this lower nature has triumphed over the spirit.

Beginning in the past we can see the lines of a future reality beginning to form. To the extent that we are prepared to understand the past and to work in the present we can realize the ideal of this future reality. A new race will be formed that will constitute the connecting link between present-day humanity and the spiritualized human being of the future. But one must distinguish between the evolution of races and the evolution of souls. It lies within the freedom of every single soul to develop itself toward this external form of a race, whose character corresponds to the good that it will incarnate. Individuals will belong to this race only through the exercise of their free will and through a great exertion of their soul forces. Membership in a race will no longer be forced upon a soul, but rather it will be the result of an individual's evolution.

The meaning of Manichean teaching is that, from now on, souls should prepare themselves to transform into good the evil that will appear in its full strength in the sixth epoch. Indeed, it will be necessary for human souls to become strong enough to protect, through a spiritual alchemy, the good from the evil that will come to light.

The evolution of our planet earth will lead it back through the former phases of its development in reversed order. First the earth will unite with the moon, then a union—a reunion—of this mixed-world body with the sun will occur. The reuniting of the moon with the earth will coincide with a high tide of evil on the earth. In contrast to this, the union of the earth with the sun will mark the beginning of blessed happiness, the reign of the chosen people.

Human beings will bear the mark of the seven great phases of earth evolution. The book of the seven seals spoken of in the Apocalypse will be opened. The woman dressed in the sun and with the moon under her feet is related to the time when the earth will be united again with the sun and the moon. The trumpets of the last judgment will sound forth, for the earth will have arrived in a devachanic condition, where tone, not light, will rule. The end of earthly evolution will stand in the sign of the Christ principle that will permeate all of humankind. Human beings will have become similar to Christ; they will gather around Christ like a multitude around the lamb, and the New Jerusalem will arise as the fruit of this evolution. It represents the crowning of the world.

Today I would like to present something that is purely historical, as it were. I believe that the ninth century and the fifteenth century, which I will speak about in a future lecture, can indeed be considered in such a way that important things can be seen from the consideration of the cultural content of precisely these two centuries, from which much can be learned for the present, for the assessment of current conditions. We are dealing in the 9th century with a significant historical period of European life, in that in this 9th century, so to speak, the Occident is already approaching us in the sense that it has become Christianized. The earlier centuries are actually centuries in which Christianity is only just being integrated into Western life. And in the 9th century, that is, in the period that followed the century of, for example, Charlemagne, we see that Europe has a Christian character, that Christian character that has then been working through the centuries in the lives of the people of Europe. But the fact that Europe has become so Christian, as it actually appears to us in the 9th century, has many prerequisites. And one can only judge how Christianity has become established if one considers these manifold prerequisites.

We know, of course, that at the time of the emergence of Christianity, the Roman Empire was just beginning its imperial period, that it was beginning to encompass, in a unified administrative form, basically the whole world known at that time, or to assert this encompassing, to really experience it. We know that this is the time when Hellenism as an external political form of existence is already declining, that Hellenism has long since penetrated into Romanism as a ferment of education and culture, and we then have to direct our attention primarily to the fact that from the beginnings of Christianity, which we do know, this Christianity gradually settled into the entire form of the Roman Empire, into all the administrative and constitutional forms of the Roman Empire. And we see then how Christianity, developing under the most diverse conditions in Europe, in the first, second, and third centuries, becomes established in what is there as the Roman way of life. But then we see how this assimilation of Christianity is initially connected with a complete anarchization of European life. We know how the Roman Empire, from the moment in world history when it was at its most widespread, clearly showed the seeds of its decline.

The question will always occupy the mind of anyone who contemplates these things: how did this Roman Empire, which rose to such glory, actually perish in the first three or four centuries of the Christian era? One can believe that the onslaught of the northern, Germanic peoples alone was responsible for the fall of the Roman Empire. One can then find some of this guilt in the spread of Christianity itself. One will misinterpret the deeper basis for the downfall of the Western Roman Empire if one seeks the only motives for this downfall in these factors. For the Western Roman Empire shows, if one looks at it more thoroughly, that such structures do have a life of their own, that they have, so to speak, a birth, a youth, a certain age of maturity, and that they then gradually die, and that the causes of this dying-off must be sought within the state itself, just as, in the case of an individual organism, the causes of its aging and physical dying-off must be sought within the organism itself and not in external conditions. However, it is possible to discern from external appearances how this gradual aging and eventual dying-off of such a thing as the Roman Empire took place.

What must be taken into account when considering European development into the 9th century is that two phenomena clearly emerge before the eye that looks at history. One is the gradual decline of the Roman Empire and all that was connected with it; the other, however, is that at the same time the oriental way of life flourishes. We see that in the East, far beyond the areas bordering the Roman Empire to the East, a cultural flowering develops, albeit an external, material cultural flowering. In other words, these countries, to which the Roman Empire, one cannot even say that it bordered them in its cultural flowering, but which it nominally included, these countries develop a brilliant material cultural flowering. Without this material cultural flowering, which formed on the periphery of the Roman Empire, it would have been impossible for Islam to flourish and for the Arabs to assert themselves in the historical development later on, when they were able to lay claim to a large part of the world in such a brilliant way until the 8th or 9th century. We see that up to the 8th or 9th century the Arab domination spread under the spiritual banner of Mohammed as far as Spain, but that in other directions, too, European life came into clear contact with all the cultural blossoms that arose all around. What the Arabs achieved in Spain and Sicily and in the East, before they became the enemies of Europe, must have been rooted in a rich and splendid material civilization. Only on such a foundation was it possible for the Arabs to accomplish such brilliant conquests. Where does this phenomenon come from, which is more closely connected than one might think with what happened in Europe up to the ninth century? How did this phenomenon come about, that on the one hand the Roman Empire was declining, and on the other hand the oriental character was taking a brilliant upswing and had an extraordinary effect on the Occident? For it did not only work through its conquest, it worked in an extraordinary way spiritually. One cannot believe how much of what the Arabs, partly through the Greek education that they themselves had only recently adopted and interwoven with their own nature, has influenced the European Occident.

This European Occident, through the way it has developed until the 9th century, does not have just one current in itself. All of us, insofar as we have participated in the formation of the Occident, have two distinct currents within us. It is a great mistake to believe that only the Christian current has spread in the Occident; spiritually, what has come from the Arabs has spread throughout the Occident. The way of thinking, the way of imagining, has been deeply influenced by the Arabs in European conditions. In what today's man - I do not mean the man who is intellectually ill, but the man of general education - thinks about fate, about the natural order, about life in general, the most diverse Arab thoughts are found in it, right down to the peasant's head. And if you take much of what dominates minds today, you will find that Arab thoughts are in them.

What, among many other things, can be said to be characteristic of this Arab way of thinking that spread to Europe? It can be said to be particularly characteristic that this Arab way of thinking is, first of all, subtle and abstract, does not like the concrete, and therefore prefers to view all world and natural conditions in abstractions. Alongside this is a development of fantasy that cannot be called merely flourishing, but voluptuous. Just think, what develops alongside the sober, abstract way of thinking, which even shows itself in the artistic in Arabdom, what develops in fantasy about a kind of paradise, about a kind of afterlife with all the pleasures transferred from the sensual into this afterlife. These two parallel things: sober, materialistic observation of natural and world conditions, on the other hand, a lush fantasy life, which of course then becomes dulled and becomes intelligent, is something that has been passed down to the present day. For if today you want to present something of the spiritual world, yes, if it is in the form of fantasy, then people still respond to it. Then they do not need to believe in it, but can accept it as a figment of the imagination. They put up with that, because alongside it they want to have what they call genuine, real. But that must be sober, that must be dry, that must be abstract.

These two things, which live as a second current in the soul-life of Europe, came essentially with the Arab element. Although the Arab influence has been pushed back in many respects, this way of thinking has penetrated deeply into European life, especially into southern, western and central European life, less so into eastern European life; but even there, at least into what is called “education”, it has partially penetrated. So that Christianity, which is quite different in relation to these things, had to struggle with these opposing ideas. If we want to understand Europe's development up to the 9th century, we must not forget that such Arab ideas have penetrated into Europe. It is hard to believe how much in Europe is actually close to Turkishness, to Muslim culture in the thoughts that the European has about life, destiny and so on.

But how did it come about that something could arise, or rather take root, on the periphery of the Roman Empire that caused Europe so much trouble? This is connected with the ever-increasing expansion of the Roman Empire. This Roman Empire, as it spread more and more, was obliged to obtain many, many products from the Orient to meet the needs that arose in this vast empire, and all of them had to be paid for. And we see with the development of the Roman Empire, precisely from the beginning of our calendar year, that a significant phenomenon in the development of the Roman Empire is that the Romans have to pay so much for what they obtain from the Orient. In other words, we see that during this period there is an enormous outflow of gold from the Roman Empire to the periphery. The gold flows out. And curiously enough, no new sources of gold open up. And the consequence of this is that the wealth conditions of the Roman Empire change completely, that with the development of Christianity the Roman Empire becomes poor in money, that is, poor in gold and silver. This is a phenomenon of fundamental significance. So that Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire in a region that increasingly tended towards primitive conditions in terms of its economy. For wherever there is a lack of money, wherever there is a lack of gold – on the physical plane that is the case – there the necessity very soon arises to return to primitive forms of natural economy, to primitive forms of a kind of bartering by merely exchanging goods. But that is not even the significant thing. The significant thing is that when such a scarcity of gold occurs, it becomes impossible to create extensive and meaningful human connections. As a result, people are dependent on the exploitation of much closer relationships; they are enclosed within much narrower limits in their needs in the exchange and in their coexistence.

And so it came about that the Roman economy gradually grew more and more into a way that it was not accustomed to as an empire. The institutions in the Roman Empire were all affected, all kinds of administrative institutions, administration and so on, everything that is referred to as the connection between the regions and their authorities and so on, was set up so that one had money. And now the money was getting less and less. You can clearly observe it in a particular area. Of course, as the empire grew larger and larger, the Romans needed more and more legions, especially in the outer parts of the empire; they needed soldiers. They had to be paid. You could not always transport infinite masses of things produced in Italy itself to the periphery. The soldiers wanted to be paid in gold, so that they could then trade for it from the others. But gradually the gold was no longer there. The soldiers could no longer be paid. This was the case in many areas. The Roman Empire thus died, so to speak, of its own greatness. And in its periphery, a very special wealth developed, which then of course also resulted in a certain basis for a spiritual life.

Now something else is added to this: the Romans had gradually come to be unable to live according to their old habits. Of course, one must not look at the individual people, but at the whole institutions. In the north, however, fresh peoples were there; they were organized according to their customs and habits precisely for natural economy. Among them, the tendency and urge towards natural economy had gradually developed. They were organized for such conditions, also through their deeply rooted, elementary inclinations and sympathies. These Germanic peoples – that is what they are called in their entirety, as they spread in Western and Central Europe, in the north of the Roman Empire – had gradually become, over the centuries, both at the time of complete anarchy in the 3rd and 4th centuries and up to the time of complete consolidation in the 9th century, they had gradually come to prefer a natural economy to the Roman one, because it corresponded to their customs and habits, as well as to their sympathies and inclinations. Above all, however, the natural economy corresponded in a certain sense to the institutions, the way people in these northern regions lived together.

We must now take a look at these northern regions. In general, we say: in the first Christian centuries, Germanic peoples were there. We call what spread in the north Germanic peoples only because, when something is far away, it appears uniform. When a swarm of mosquitoes is very far away, it looks like a uniform gray mass. If you were to look at each individual mosquito, it would look different. And so what spread in the north while the Roman Empire was falling apart due to the conditions described above, should not be generally referred to as “Germanic peoples”, as it appears now in the temporal distance. Above all, we must consider how it actually came about that what came from the north collided with the Roman Empire in the 3rd, 4th and 5th centuries. That must be borne in mind. Yes, even when Tacitus, in the first Christian century, saw these northern regions, it was the case that the process that had taken place there, when there was still little contact with the Roman Empire, had emerged from the fact that in all these areas there was originally a kind of native population that, if you go back in the development of Europe, leads straight back to Celtic culture, at least for Western Europe and Central Europe.

Everything that was cultivated in Europe in ancient times, of course before the emergence of Christianity, belongs to a certain Celtic indigenous population. This Celtic indigenous population can basically be found as the basis of the entire European population. The descendants of Celtic blood flow everywhere in Europe, not only in Western Europe, but above all in Central Europe. There are very many people in Bavaria, Austria, Thuringia, in whom, if one may be imprecise in describing these things, the succession of Celtic blood flows, quite apart from Western Europe. It is even highly probable that less Celtic blood flows in Western Europe than in Central Europe.

Into these primeval Celtic conditions something has been pushed which is actually rather unclear in its origin to external history. All kinds of theories have been advanced about this, but the truth is this: through what is usually called the migration of peoples, which also took place somewhat differently than it is usually described in the history books, a people element – one cannot even say a people element, but rather a larger number of people from the most diverse regions, also from Asia via Northern Europe – has pushed its way into the Celtic original population. And through the mingling of this new element with the old Celtic element, through the manifold minglingsome were stronger, some weaker, some in which the Celtic element remained in the foreground, some in which it receded into the background, the various shades of the European population came into being. And from these shades developed, on the one hand, those conditions that then became the folk conditions of Western and Central Europe, but also those conditions that led to the forms of life, to the forms of constitution and administration. There was a time when the Celtic element of the indigenous population lived relatively comfortably, perhaps even very frugally in some areas, but comfortably from year to year, not caring much about any innovations and the like, but lived along not much differently than you can see today, though less and less, in some abandoned area, where people live just from year to year without taking on any innovations. So this Celtic element lived in a certain comfortable calm, which was actually not at all appropriate for the national character of the Celts, but had gradually occurred. Then came these other masses of people, who actually only created Germanic culture by mixing with the Celts. The next thing that emerged was that, as I have already indicated, in one area the old element retained the upper hand, while the new element receded – in some areas it was the other way around – and as a result, different shades of blood emerged.

But on the other hand, the result was that the habitual residents were flooded by the intruders. The intruders became the masters. They were the ones who disturbed the peace and thus became the masters. And from this relationship between the conquering immigrant masters and the remaining original inhabitants, the relationship between the free, the semi-free and the unfree emerged. The original inhabitants were gradually pushed down into slavery. Those who had immigrated gradually formed the master class, and that determined the living conditions.

Thus Europe was settled by a population that arose in the way I have characterized it, but within which the distinct configuration of a master caste and a kind of serf or slave caste emerged. And on this basis, all the other conditions then developed. Through the nuances of which I have spoken, the various Germanic branches formed, especially towards the west, but also as far as the areas of present-day northern Bavaria, even into the areas of present-day Hesse and so on. What we call the Franks were, in some respects, the most active population, in some respects, in terms of external intellect, the most understanding, active, and in some respects, the most domineering group of the various groups that emerged as nations. This was the population group that spread more towards the west, the element of the Franks. The word is still present today in the word combination “frank und frei”; everyone knows what “frank und frei” means in its composition, and “Franken” is related to the word “frank”, which has a close relationship with the word: to want to feel free, independent, outwardly free, independent.

In the middle remained the population that could be described – if one wants a summarizing name – as the Saxon population, which spread into Thuringia, into the northern areas opposite Thuringia, down the Elbe, to the coast. This was the population that was more stubborn in terms of its older national character, that particularly held on to its original identity, that, so to speak, embodied the human-personal-conservative feeling.

And so there were other groups. It would be too much to list all these groups. What is important is that the British population developed from the Saxon group, through a variety of mixtures but with a strong predominance of the Saxon group, and that the British population, if one may say so, belongs to the Saxon tribe in its essential origin, leading back to these centuries.

Now we have to consider what the life of this population, which has developed in this way, actually was. This population, which lived there, was a youthful, childlike population in relation to the southern population, to the Roman and Greek population. What had become old in Celtic culture had not become very old at all, but had become old early on. A rejuvenation process did take place, however, in that certain ethnic groups pushed in from northern Europe and also indirectly from Asia. Above all, the population had sympathies for the southern element, for the natural economy, for the economy of barter, which placed little value on the money economy, which only comes into play when an empire is at an advanced stage.

Those who, despite the migration of peoples – which is, after all, somewhat different than presented in the history books – developed within these newly emerging European conditions, were actually basically only connected to their neighbors, to their closest neighbors. But there was also a very specific peculiarity in the intellectual relationship. All these nations still had something that the Greek and Roman populations had long since lost. Even well into the 6th, 7th, and 8th centuries, they all had, to a much greater extent than the most uneducated Greek and Roman populations, an original atavistic clairvoyance. These people all lived in connection with certain spiritual beings. For them, there was not only an external material nature, there were not only seasons and wind and weather, but for them there was, because they saw it in those states that were more than a dream, the god Wotan, whom the people knew. Many at least knew: they themselves saw the god Wotan, who moved with the wind, on wings of wind.

The people knew that. They also knew, for example, the god Saxnot, who helped them in their battles when they had to fight. When they had fought the battles, or before they fought them, their god Saxnot appeared to them, and much more. They were also familiar with the rapidly changing weather conditions not only in a material way, but they were spiritually familiar with the elements, with the god Thor, with his hammer, and the like. These were real experiences for these people, they still knew that. And besides, these people had a belief in guidance from the spiritual world because they knew from their own experience that there is a spiritual world. They believed that everything that happens in the days, in the seasons, is guided by spiritual forces and beings. If any tribe was victorious, it knew that the tribal god had stood by and guided it.

You could say of the tribal god: He led. You cannot say of a general human god that he is the god of battle. You can say that of a tribal god just fine. The people were right when they said of their tribal deities that they were led by them. Of course, any tribe can say that it has been protected and cared for by a tribal god, but the same cannot be said of a god to whom the whole of humanity is attributed in the same sense.

The priesthoods, which developed – there were also mysteries in these areas, we have often spoken about such things – in order to have, so to speak, the leadership in this whole context of people with the divine spiritual powers. But this leadership was a very specific one because the people knew that there are spiritual powers, that there are spiritual forces and entities.

So outwardly these people lived in a certain primitive way with a natural economy; inwardly, one can say, they lived a kind of spiritual life. There were no educated people in the sense that there were in Greece and Rome. The priests were leaders; they organized the life that the others also knew. But they were not educated in the sense that the Greek philosophers or the Roman philosophers, or the Roman poets or those who could read and write in Greece and Rome and were educated in this sense; because the people did not know all this. Of course there was no reading and writing. So you are dealing with a population that lived in primitive natural conditions and that led a spiritual life in a certain way.

There was a certain inner strength due to the revitalization that had come into this Celtic culture; it was suitable for the primitive conditions. The southern part was not suitable for the primitive conditions. In certain points, what was a new, young element there clashed with what was present in the south, was present in such a way that in an empire perishing from lack of money, Christianity took root, was adopted in the way you know things. And it was particularly at such points, where the two areas, the old dying and the young emerging, collided, that the Romans still founded their cities, their border cities on the periphery of their empire. Cologne, Trier, Mainz, Strasbourg, Basel, Constance, Salzburg, Augsburg, these were urban structures that had existed since Roman times.

Now it should be clear to you: the Romans thought of these urban structures of Cologne, Trier, Mainz, Strasbourg, Constance, Basel, Salzburg and so on as a kind of protective fort against the onslaughing people. But when Romanism - not through anything else, but through itself - gradually disintegrated, the cities were in a very special situation. In the countryside it was good for primitive conditions. In the cities it was nothing special under primitive conditions. And the consequence of this was that the cities would have been deserted if they had not been used in some other way. But the emerging church, which had taken hold of Christianity, was a good observer that knew: one must hold to the cities. And so the dioceses were transferred to the cities, which would otherwise have been deserted. But as a result, the cities gradually became a point of concentration for the surrounding people, who were unfree, over the centuries towards the 9th century, because the dioceses were transferred there, because education came into them – for the bishop initially came from the southern regions. The free had no particular reason to move into the cities, which would gradually have become deserted; so they followed the bishops and clergy into the cities only to a limited extent. But those who were unfree followed the calls from the church to move into the cities.

And if you now look at the basic conditions, you will easily understand: the unfree were, after all, the stragglers, the descendants of the original population. There was a great deal of Celtic blood in them. What flocked together in the cities was basically an element that wanted to free itself from those who had become the masters there. This gave the cities, little by little, the character of medieval free enterprise. This was essentially due to the fact that it was often the seething of the Celtic blood in the cities that the cities flourished in the Middle Ages, in the early Middle Ages up to the 9th or 10th century.

Then we must realize that all these conditions were real historical necessities. It is hard to believe how little man's character could be guided by external abstract means, especially in earlier times. But it could be guided if one first studied the conditions and then linked them to the concrete. Thus we see – and we could cite many examples, but I can only give a sketch – how a new element arises and how the old element in the south gradually dies out due to its own nature. This dying out can be seen from the fact that, on the one hand, in the south, ancient science and the ancient element of education gradually reach their particular height but then come to a dead end, freeze; they can no longer advance. In the sixth century, Emperor Justinian abolished the office of consul in Rome, helped to condemn the teachings of Origen and closed the last remnants of the Athenian schools of philosophy. The old Athenian schools of philosophy were transferred to Persia. There, Gondishapur was founded as an academy. The Athenian philosophers follow the paths that gold has taken, settling where a spiritual life can develop on the basis of a certain wealth. In Europe, it is necessary to take into account the primitive conditions that have arisen.

And two factors initially knew how to deal with these primitive conditions. It can be said that the other factors knew little how to deal with them. But two factors knew well how to reckon with these primitive conditions, namely, the papacy, which was a good observer, not only of the bad, but also of the good, because in those days the papacy had very many good qualities, and those - they were basically nothing more than large landowners - who gradually asserted themselves within the Frankish tribe as Merovingians, Carolingians and so on.

What did the papacy need? The papacy could not easily spread Christianity as a doctrine. It did make a thorough, even very thorough attempt to spread Christianity as a doctrine; but in such matters one must always take into account the concrete, real conditions. Pope Gregory the Great sent fifty emissaries to England and Ireland, and from there the emissaries went to Central Europe, Gallus, who is connected with St. Gallen, and many others. But here you could count on people who came from a peoplehood and had a great gift of persuasion. This was a current through which Christianity was spread in a certain spiritual way, spread in such a way that it also went among the rural population, who lived under the characterized conditions, built churches. And around these churches, Christianity gradually took hold in such a way that the people who, as Franks, Saxons, Alemanni and so on, populated these northern regions did not significantly change their concept of God. They still had this concept of God from their atavistic clairvoyance. They did not particularly change it; but, take any area, some messenger came, built a small church - in Alsace, for example, this has happened over and over again in many areas - near a place where there was an image, a statue of the god Saxnot or something like that. He builds a small church, and he knows how to take the people. After he has built his church with his comrades – they did everything themselves, they were hardworking people, not just book writers – he goes to the people and says: Now you have your god, it is the rain god; praying to him will achieve nothing!

Such a messenger knows how to make it plausible to them that the God for whom he built the church is better. Now, this required persuasion, because, of course, the God whom he called the Christ had not shown any direct influence on the rain either. But this was mixed up with the fact that the ideas about the gods that had emerged from the military campaigns were gradually brought into contact with Christianity. When some tribe was defeated by another that had already converted to Christianity, it turned out that the people said, “Our god did not help us; their god helped them.” I am only trying to express that the Christian God was equated with the individual tribal deities. But people did not arrive at any other concept of God than that which they had from their atavistic clairvoyance. From this arose the necessity, when the Roman Church naturalized Christianity by using this, that the old tribal deities had to be gradually eradicated, root and branch. For they wanted, as it were, to replace the name of God with the other deities.

As I said, attempts were made to spread Christianity as a doctrine, as a spiritual way of life. But it may be said that, owing to the most diverse circumstances, another element was more successful at first, and that was the warlike element of the Franks, who were the most enterprising tribe, the most active, who, through their intellect, through their understanding, really knew: they could make something out of the adoption of what was bound to perish in the Roman Empire, through this adoption of institutions and so on. Through these and similar circumstances a connection arose between the Frankish folk element and the shadow of the Roman Empire, with the institutions and the views of the Roman Empire.

This began in the 8th century, continued into the 9th century, and the result was that Christianity was associated with the conquering element. The Saxon tribe, which was conservative and stubborn, was indeed overcome in a conquering manner; and from the West spread that which arose initially from a combination of the old customs and habits with regard to the judiciary and human coexistence with Christianity. This combining of the original customs with the southern element, which came from Christianity but in which Romanism lived, is evident in everything. Today we no longer realize how much it is evident in everything. For example, people believe that a count is a particularly Germanic institution, while the word 'count' is nothing more than something related to graph, stylus, and writing. Writing and administration were taken from the south. The one who administered was the count. And in the event of war, he also led the district, the area. The word “count” has the same root as graphology and stylus and is related to writing. But everything that concerns writing, pen-pushing, everything that concerns education, that came from the southern areas, and which has its real life in dying. So that these two elements interacted well into the 9th century. The most powerful element had just become the Frankish element through Charlemagne, whose power was based primarily on the fact that it had absorbed ecclesiastical Christianity and was now renewing the shadow of the Roman Empire. Charlemagne was indeed crowned in Rome; the old Caesaranity was to rise again.

These things, however, had only an artificial supporting power in themselves, not a natural one. We know then: after Charlemagne, the wide areas that Charlemagne supposedly held together initially still followed, and which were also still ruled like a kind of empire by Louis the Dumb - that is to say, the Pious. And when the power of the original conditions became more pronounced, when the Germanic-Frankish breakthrough came – because this Frankish element emerged, as I said, from a large part of what is now called Germany – when that breakthrough came, then the Treaty of Verdun, 843, had to divide. Why did it actually have to be divided? It had to be divided because it was unnatural to hold together. The real cement was Romance, but it was actually effective through the chancellery and through what developed as the first primitive schools and the like, and through what the clergy did, which asserted itself as such. The cement was Romance, but life was not Romance, life was Germanic. The people were organized in small groups. At the head of such small groups stood a duke – not by law. The laws only came into being when what was the custom of the Ripuarian Franks was written down in the Lex Ripuaria or the Ripuarium, in the Salic Law, Lex Salica, and so on. In small communities, the duke was originally the one who brought in the strangers, who led the army that made the settled population into serfs. He gradually disappeared. The count was appointed where there was a duke. You can say that the dukes survived as far as Bavaria and Thuringia. But the count is placed there; he is placed there, judges, administers, where the duke used to be, whom the people called that because he was there before they came to the area. The count is installed and gradually becomes a landowner, gathering the unfree around him and making them his serfs. The feudal system comes into being, the development of which would be very interesting to observe, but we do not have the time.

And we see that it is actually through the interaction of such details that those great landowners come into being. Because that is what they are, namely those great landowners that we see in the Merovingians and Carolingians. They are great landowners; and they were now sitting inside, far removed from following Roman law, because according to Roman law one could not have divided up the land as in the Treaty of Verdun! So you divide when you are the owner and divide among your sons. That was an old custom where the personality was involved. That was right according to ancient custom. Roman law could not have allowed that in reality.

These were such disintegrating elements. They were everywhere, these disintegrating elements, so that one can only properly understand this 9th century, which is crucial, if one knows that all of Western and Central Europe was flooded by the Romanic element, the popular nature. This was even more pronounced later, as we will discuss in the 14th and 15th centuries, when it will become even more apparent. Of course, educated people are placed in the form of clergy and so on, but it is the Romanic element that overflows these areas. But the Germanic element lives in the people - throughout Europe from the 9th century onwards, yes, even in England, in the British Empire. And this Germanic element is first expressed particularly in the element of the Franks. It was only through this division of the heritage, which actually took place according to purely private, arbitrary circumstances, that this tripartite structure came into being, so that one received this middle long strip along the Rhine and Italy, the other received what was to the west of it, and the third received what was to the east of it. And this then became the basis for the later division of the German and French characters, as a result of the Treaty of Verdun. And what Lothar got in the intermediate line created the happy basis for Central and Western Europe to fight with each other forever! But these things are connected in this way.

Now we must bear in mind that there are various and variously important factors at work: the Germanic element, particularly in this period, finding expression in the Frankish element; but the Romance element, which, as a shadow of ancient times, flits across the scene like a ghost, an old inheritance. And into this development, according to the corresponding conditions given by this nature – whereby the Germanic nature, always arising out of the strength of the people, thus out of reality, wanted to shatter the Romanic semblance – into this development, Christianity had to be spread from Rome. One had to take into account all these conditions, one had to reckon with the urban elements, with the rural elements, and one had to try to introduce Christianity in such a way that people could understand it. In spite of Constantine and his successors, it could not be introduced in Rome, because education, although it had reached a high level, had reached a dead end. It had to be introduced into popular elements that had original, youthful vigor in them.

Therefore, one had to push back to the East what had just frozen into dogmas, what wanted to remain at a certain point of view. And in the West, one had to reckon with a popular element that wanted to develop out of the ecclesiastical, out of all the elements that I have indicated. The papacy in particular could already count on these elements. There was already active calculation on the part of the papacy when Charlemagne was crowned; for one simply reckoned with this large landowner, who also let himself be reckoned with. And then it was always the policy of the papacy, first and foremost, to introduce Christianity in such a way that it was suitable for seizing the souls of those who had just outgrown the old atavistic clairvoyance.

It is of particular importance that from the ninth century onwards, and influenced by the separation from Oriental Christianity, the Roman Church began to take the European ethnic elements and conditions into account in an eminent way, when under Nicholas I, the great Pope, the Orient began to separate from the Occident within the Christian element. The underlying reason for this separation was the necessity to take into account what was rooted in European conditions, as I have outlined in very sketchy fashion. If we now consider the 14th and 15th centuries in terms of their basic character, we will see that the period from the 8th to the 14th century is characterized by the interaction of the papal element, the interaction of the Central European element, and the development of that European configuration, which then changed again when the great discoveries and the Reformation and the like came.

I just wanted to show you the factors that culminated in the ninth century in purely historical terms. In the development of Europe, one can clearly distinguish the first three Christian centuries, which led to a kind of anarchy. Everything is topsy-turvy. In the third century, everything is mixed up. But then, through the natural conditions, the situation developed over the next five or six centuries, into the ninth century, in such a way that one can say that Christianity was carried into the circumstances in the way I have indicated, but that these circumstances were actually given by the way people lived.