The Rudolf Steiner Archive

It is a grievous time in which we live, a time more of effective actions full of courage and sacrifices, on one side, a time of severe ordeals for the human souls, on the other side. To stimulate some sensations just in view of our destiny-burdened time may be my task at the end of these considerations. Since we are allowed to be together in such a time, we want to let culminate our sensations at the end of our considerations according to this time. I may start from something that can spread light just about various matters which speak significantly to our souls in this time.

Since we started considering the world spiritual-scientifically, we call the four members of our human nature: physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego. We know that the ego or rather that in the human being which we name ego by which we express the ego which is the youngest, but is also for us the most significant member of the human being. If the human being only consisted of physical body, etheric body and astral body as the result of the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, he would not be a human being. The human being is a human being because he received his ego from the spirits of the higher hierarchies during the earth evolution. He develops this ego in the course of his successive incarnations in different human communities, through peoples and periods, until the earth arrives at the goal of its development and the human being also arrives at his goal developing his ego. However, we also know that there are higher spiritual beings—we use for them the word “higher,”—who belong to the higher hierarchies which stand as it were above the human being. We speak of the hierarchy of the angels or angeloi, of the hierarchy of the archangels or archangeloi, the archai or spirits of the age and so on, upward rising. We call them with these names, we could use other names just as well, but the names are introduced in the West.

How have we to imagine, actually, these spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies in relation to the human being here on earth? We go out from the surroundings of the human being. We know, it is the mineral realm, the plant realm, the animal realm, and the human being has to consider the human realm as the highest after all he can observe. So that we can say: if we take the visible realms on earth, we have the realms of the minerals, the plants, the animals and that of the human beings. Above these realms, as it were, as a continuation upwards, the realms of the angeloi, the archangeloi, the archai et cetera appear. We can simply imagine that the realms are not closed with the human realm, but also extend farther upwards, only that the higher realms cannot be seen with the outer senses.

It could seem remarkable if we go upwards from the realms of nature to the realm of human beings that above the human realm invisibility begins at once. However, this will be remarkable only as long as one does not think that the animals do not see the human being in such a way as a human being sees the other. That is completely clear to somebody who is able to transport himself into the animal view. If the animals could speak, they would only speak of visible realms, of the mineral realm, the plant realm, and the animal realm. They would consider themselves as the highest visible realm. The fact that the animals see the human being like a human being sees the other is only a prejudice.

We are human beings of a supersensible, ghostly existence to the animals; and if the animals had only such a perception as we have it, they would not see the human beings, but they would be as invisible for them as the realm of angels for the human beings. Only because they have a certain kind of dreamy clairvoyance, the animals see the human being as a ghost, as a supersensible being. The human being can have no idea directly of the image which an animal has of him. In return, the animals see something also downwards, or properly speaking, perceive something downwards that the human being does not perceive any more. Since the animals perceive not only like the human being perceives the mineral world, but still perceive—the lower animals most intensely—something else. If an animal, for instance, a snail creeps on the ground, and then it perceives the whole peculiarity of the ground. This would disturb the human being perpetually if he, while he goes on the surface of the earth, perceived this in the same way as a snail or a tortoise. With the higher animals which have warm blood it is somewhat different, but just the lower animals really perceive the whole peculiarity of the ground on which they creep. They perceive the whole peculiarity of the air; they perceive everything that is round them in another way as the human being. The animal knows whether it is on a soil which is marshy, or whether it moves on a sandy soil, because it perceives the whole peculiarity of the soil. Namely this is as similar as we hear the things in our surroundings. The whole mineral world is infiltrated with forces which make it shake and which the human being does not perceive. The animal perceives this fine shaking, these forces in such a way that it feels something as sympathetic, something not. If the animal turns back, for example, from one soil type to the other, it is not so that the animal sees it like the human being, but because something is a little bit painful to it, because the fine movements go on reverberating in it, because it feels as if it belongs to it. This is a kind of instinctive hearing like a hearing of that which takes action in the ground or this is like smelling. So that we can say: the animal perceives an elemental realm, and the higher hierarchies begin already with the human being for it.—We are put in the middle in the world which we know as the external sensory world, the external realms of the sensory world, and the world of the higher hierarchies. We call the lower visible hierarchies the realms of nature; we call the invisible ones the higher hierarchies.

We also know that such a being of the higher hierarchies, for example, an angel, once also experienced the level of humanity. This took place, while the earth went through the old Moon evolution. There the human being was not yet a human being; for he had no ego; he was on the preparatory level of humanity only and had the astral body as his highest member. The beings who belong to the hierarchy of the angeloi went through their human level during the old Moon evolution. The spirits to whom we turn as the guarding spirits of the individual human being are these beings of the hierarchy of the angeloi. To each of them, as it were, a human being is assigned. “Spirits of your souls” are those who stand immediately in the hierarchy above the human being who really spread out their protecting wings, symbolically spoken, over the human beings namely over the individual human being.

We come then to the hierarchy of the archangeloi. They also were human beings once. During the old Sun evolution the beings we call archangeloi today were on the human level. They were not so formed as the human beings today, of course not, they were formed quite differently, but they were on their human level in that time. We are not allowed to imagine that during the old Sun evolution the archangeloi looked as the human beings today, but concerning their development they were on their human level. The spirits of personality or spirits of the ages were on their human level during the old Saturn evolution.

Now, we pick out the spirits we call archangeloi. There we have such spirits as archangeloi who went through the human level during the old Sun evolution, ascended to the level of the angels during the Moon evolution, and today they have ascended to the level of the archangeloi. We leave these spiritual beings put before our souls at first, as it were, standing two levels above us; later we will come back to them. Then we have the spiritual beings who were human beings during the old Saturn evolution, today they are spirits of the ages, they are three levels above us. We let them put again. Now we want to look at our relation to these both types of spiritual beings.

When the human being goes through an incarnation, then stand above us the spirits we count to the hierarchy of the angels, then the spirits we count to the hierarchy of the archangeloi, and those we count to the hierarchy of the archai, spirits of the ages or spirits of personality. However, they also develop. Let us pick out the archai, the spirits of personality or spirits of the ages. We go through our incarnation, and then we go through the gate of death, come into a spiritual world after death, go through a certain purely spiritual development between death and a new birth and come to an earth existence by a new birth again. Now we can ask: what does this depend on that we move down to the earth again after a certain number of years? In public talks this question is often put. Then one can already give an answer from certain points of view, but intimately speaking in our branches we can give a more objective answer pointing to reality.

While we live here in the physical body, the spirit of the ages has a certain level of development. He does something that is connected with the development of the human beings on earth, and he experiences a development on his part. If this spirit of the ages has come in the course of a development so far that we all let flow into ourselves that which he has worked through on his part, then we are ripe, as it were, to come down to an earth incarnation. If he has advanced to a certain level and we have developed by the spiritual worlds up to a certain level, we can enter an earth development again. Let us understand well in this regard and refrain from our own development first of all. Let us look at the spirit of the ages developing in a very long period.

I may say the following. If we consider the development of the earthly humankind in such a way that we go back to the foundation of the ancient Rome, about eight hundred years before the Mystery of Golgotha, we find that there a certain spirit of the ages started his development. Another spirit of the ages was leading and steering the destiny of the earth before. This spirit of the ages who took over the leadership of the spiritual earthly development in those days was leading up to the 16th century. A spirit of the ages leads the destiny of the earth for such a period. Since the 16th century, another spirit of the ages is there. We deal with two spirits of the ages. The human being who was, for example, in the third century before the Mystery of Golgotha in any incarnation on the earth experienced that which this spirit of the ages caused for the earth. For the time after his death if this human being has died in the third century or also in the second century, the spirit of the ages can give him nothing at first. He gave him what he could give him. Now the spirit of the ages must go through a number of years again, until he is able to give something new to the human being. This human being comes again down to the earth who was between death and birth in a spiritual world, when the spirit can give him something new.

Now, however, it is arranged that way that the human being comes down several times on average, because the spirit of the ages is not able to give the human being everything that he could give him because of the imperfection of the human beings. That is why the human being comes down repeatedly in the time in which a spirit of the ages develops. But basically it depends on the fact that the spirits of the ages regulate the successive incarnations of the human beings. Now, however, the spirits of the ages regulate this whole course of the human destiny, as it were, by their subordinates. These are the archangels. Such archangels govern in subordinated positions for a much shorter time than the spirits of the ages.

While the spirits of the ages rule as long as I have stated just now, we can assume a spirit of the ages from the foundation of Rome up to the 16th century, the spirits we count to the hierarchy of the archangels rule only for three to four centuries. They alternate in such a way that about six or seven come one after the other, while a spirit of the ages is ruling. So that we have that archangel we call Oriphiel in the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. Then Anael, Zachariel, Raphael, Samael, Gabriel rule successively; and now since 1879 we have the government of that archangel we call Michael. So we have, if we look at the spiritual worlds, the higher government of the spirits of the ages and subordinate to them, the successive governments of archangels. Because the human being cannot take up everything that the spirit of the ages would give him, he does not take it directly from the hands of the spirit of the ages, but from the hands of the less powerful archangel. Keep in mind: our personal guardians belong to the hierarchy of the angeloi. Above them there are the spirits who regulate the interrelations of the human beings. Above them there are the archai or spirits of personality or spirits of the ages.

If I talk in such a way, it always concerns those beings who went through their development properly. But not all the spirits develop regularly. There are spiritual beings who were archai already during the Saturn evolution who lagged behind, however, on the level of the archai at that time, the level of humankind. They have not gone beyond their Saturn level during the earth development. They did not ascend to the level of the regular development. They maintained their human character, are supersensible Saturn beings on one side, however, are on the level of humankind. There are also beings of the hierarchy of the archai who stopped on the human level during the Sun evolution and stand there now in the supersensible world still as human beings. We term these beings that lagged behind the luciferic beings or ahrimanic beings with collective names. We cannot get involved in the difference between luciferic and ahrimanic beings today. These are spirits who lagged behind.

We have now to answer the question: how does the human being conceive, here in his earthly incarnation, the influence of the spirits who have properly progressed, the spirits of the ages, the archai, and the archangeloi who are their servants? These beings are supersensible; the human being cannot get a relationship to them like to the sensory world. Hence, the human being does not know as a rule if he only relies on the sensory world that he has been put in a development which is directed by the archai and archangeloi above him. He does not know it; but these supersensible beings intervene in his whole nature. Also those spiritual beings we call folk-spirits who lead whole peoples are among the archangeloi, the archangels. And in so far as we have the people to which we belong to thank for that which we are, we have to look at that what the nation's being gives us as a gift of the corresponding being of the hierarchy of the archangeloi. It is the inspiration of the archangeloi which comes to us because we are put into a people. Now we only need to think what it means for the human being to be put into a people. In the people's being there flow mental qualities, but also customs; a certain configuration of the being flows into the human being. One cannot imagine at all that somebody would have become that who somebody is in an incarnation because of the gift of the folk-spirit, in reality of the gift of an archangel.

Except that we stand within a people and receive, inspired by an archangel, certain configurations of our whole being, we stand in the development of the whole humankind. There we are exposed to the intuitions into which the spirit of the ages of the hierarchy of the archai leads us. Imagine that we receive something today in our present spiritual culture that goes beyond any national differentiation; what we have because we live from the 19th to the 20th centuries what we would not have had if we had lived during the Roman or Greek times. We have the spirit of the ages to thank for this. You can strictly make a distinction between the gift of the spirit of the ages and the gift of the folk-spirit. If only this were there which is a regular development of the human being, of the angel, of the archangel or that of the spirit of the ages then we would receive, every individual human being, the gift always from our spirit of the ages and from our corresponding folk-spirit and would develop by means of this gift. The human beings on earth would develop side by side. All members of the different peoples would receive the gift of their folk-spirits in such a way, as if five pictures would hang completely differently from each other in a gallery which would show miscellaneous things, but which would not disturb each other in the slightest.

Thus individual human beings would receive the gift of their folk-spirits on earth side by side. They would not disturb each other if their development had proceeded regularly. But there are beings who lagged behind. Among the guiding archangeloi are those who began their development properly on the Sun and have become right archangeloi up to the earth evolution, but also those who stopped on the Sun level who are basically only on the level of human beings. These beings are on the same level as the folk-spirits, and, nevertheless, they lagged behind them, have the qualities of invisible supersensible human beings, not those of archangels. They make the same claims to the world like the archangeloi in a certain way, but they have not reached the level of the archangeloi on earth. Hence, they must work with the same forces as on the Sun. The result is that they do not seize the human beings as the archangels do directing them from above, but penetrate them as invisible human beings. They do not lead the human being from above, but go into the human nature. These spirits, who compete with the really leading folk-spirits, cause that the nations feud with each other, do not live in peace with each other.

The human being would not be tempted at all to identify his personality, his humanness with his nation, but he would look at the person as something that feeds him spiritually. However, he would not stand up as a fighter for his nation, not identify his person with it. The human being would not say, I am of this or that nationality, but: nationality is there, and I have to get my spiritual food indirectly via this nationality into which I have been born. But while the archangel stimulates him to think that way, the other comes who is on the level of humankind, actually, and is basically a luciferic spirit, and leads him into his nationality.

The result is that the archangel-like does not come down as a gift to the human being, but that the human being identifies himself with the nation like with a completely personal affair, and thereby this quarrel of the nationalities comes into being on the earth. That must absolutely be clear to us: because we were not only exposed to the influence of the leading archangel, but also to the influence of the retarded archangel, we identify ourselves with the nationality as we do on earth. That is just the spiritual-scientific feeling that we as human beings are able to rise above the only national to find access to the general humanness. Then we can be national in the most remarkable sense. As well as the one human being may do that or the other may do something different as art, and the former doing his art does not need to be the adversary of the other, one did not need to be the adversary of the other concerning nationality if there were no retarded archangels who cause the identification. One has to presuppose that if one generally speaks about the basis of the human development with reference to the national or other differentiations.

Concerning the spirit of the ages you will still see further details, in which way the luciferic element works into the regular element if we consider the following. A spirit of the ages works for a certain time. Since the 16th century a new spirit of the ages is there. This spirit of the ages has a particular task. He has the task to add the whole materialistic skill and understanding of the world to the former impulses of development. Hence, materialism made so big progress since the 16th century in the world. Therefore, we do not need to look at the materialistic understanding as something more inferior to the former kind of understanding if we identify ourselves not only unilaterally with it. What will somebody who looks at the matters that way say about the government of the different spirits of the ages? He says: we are now controlled by the particular spirit of the ages; before we were controlled by another spirit of the ages. The human beings had other ideas, other impulses then. If the human being now were able to be influenced by the properly developing spirits of the ages, he would say: we must now adapt ourselves to this spirit of the ages, while we penetrate more the laws of the evolution of the world, of the materialistic thinking. Then another spirit of the ages comes after a time; he causes another attitude of mind in the human thinking.

I emphasised it often that we as supporters of spiritual science must say: today we announce spiritual science using particular words, ideas and concepts, but it is not correct that we believe, that what we say today holds good for the whole earth future, but it changes. When two thousand years are over, our knowledge of spiritual science today is announced with other words, just as we talk differently than in the Greek epoch; nothing remains of the kind of our words. We do not rely on anything that externally remains but we know that one spirit of the ages replaces the other and that they all stand equally side by side.

Somebody who is influenced by the retarded spirits of the ages of the Saturn and identifies himself with their influence says: at that time all the other human beings were silly; this was the nursery of humankind. We have advanced so far today; we have found completely valid truth for all future.—One becomes humbler, more modest in the field of spiritual science. Somebody who identifies himself with the spirit of the ages says: Copernicus found the right thing finally; something different was once believed. Now the human beings will say forever: the earth and the planets move in ellipses around the sun. The sun is in its centre.—Spiritual science already knows today that this is a one-sided teaching. It is very good for our materialistic time to imagine the world, but it is wrong. It is not true at all that the sun is in one focus of the ellipse and the earth moves around. It is, actually, a materialistically calculated apparent movement. In truth it is in such a way that the sun moves and the earth and the other planets run after it in a helical movement. Because certain positions originate in this helical movement, the earth stands once here, another time there. That appears as an ellipse. In truth it is another line. The time will come when the external science knows this, too.

One becomes more modest if one knows that truth is announced in a certain way for certain times. We never state as correct supporters of spiritual science: from now on into all future all human beings say, the human being consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego. But the future speaks quite differently, because everything is developing. The ideas of yesterday are as justified as the ideas of today. We can be controlled not only by a spirit of the ages who leads us to believe that all previous knowledge was a pack of lies and we have advanced so wonderfully far. With reference to the spirit of the ages you see people possessed by the luciferic spirit saying: how wonderfully far we have advanced. How imperfect everything was what one thought and said about the world once. What we have found since the 16-century remains as eternal truth.

The folk-spirit is basically a complicated being on the whole. He is the regular folk-spirit who floats above us and if we only followed him we would follow in such a way that we take up his gifts because we are in his sphere. But he is impaired perpetually in his effectiveness by his luciferic companion who obsesses us and induces us to identify ourselves as individual human beings with the whole nationality. However, the individual human being does this differently. It is very important that one really sees that in the middle of Europe a people has to develop that has another relationship to its folk-spirit as the peoples have in the periphery of Europe. We have to learn this insight. What takes place under the surface of the human consciousness and what depends really on the spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies is extremely important.

The materialistically thinking human being regards it still an insanity if one says that such impulses go out from the spiritual beings like this is one in Central Europe who stimulates the unaware people to such a feeling towards the divine or—because in Central Europe Christ is working—to the Christ Impulse. So that the Central European human being learns to feel Christ in such a way as He speaks to the core of the soul. This came nowhere else into being as in Central Europe. Still during the Roman time of the Christian development one understood, for example, Christ as a being who came to earth and worked for the human beings. Indeed, the advanced human beings and partly those who thought already in such a way, as we think today who we are in the possession of spiritual science felt as Paul thought: “not I, but Christ in me.” However, it is a difference compared with a feeling as we find it with Master Eckhart, with Tauler, with Angelus Silesius and similar minds. How these spirits took up the Mystery of Golgotha. We only need to ask Angelus Silesius; and he answers us with the nice saying:

Were Christ born a thousand times in Bethlehem
And not in you, you would be lost forever.

It depends on the commiseration of the Mystery of Golgotha in the own soul. These Central European human beings tried to internally experience something that is an internal picture, an internal expression of the Mystery of Golgotha. And how wonderful is it when Angelus Silesius says once about death: everything that happens in me happens in the end because God is in me and carries out the matters in me. And if I die, I do not die, but, actually, God dies in me.—Imagine what a wonderfully intimate idea of immortality already is given when one says: God dies in me.—Since God is immortal, of course. If God dies in me, death is only apparent; then one feels like Angelus Silesius felt: God dies only apparently in me, because God cannot die. So is death not that it seems externally, it is only a fact of life. Because God cannot die—but dies in anyone,—one already feels immortality with it.

This most intimate being together with God whether one feels it as something divine or as something Christian was prepared for long times in the course of the Central European development. There the Central European folk-spirits worked, so that it found an external symbolic expression, a real symbolic expression. Except in Central Europe nowhere anybody says “ich,” if he means his own self, his own being. The whole development was led by the folk-spirit who manifests himself as a spirit of language in such a way that the own being was expressed with the word ICH. But ICH, “I-Ch,” is Jesus Christ. It lies in Jesus Christ. Because in “ICH” Christ Jesus is expressed in His initial letters, it is expressed allegorically what in the Central European spiritual being is as it is connected with the most intimate experience. Whenever somebody pronounces “Ich,” he pronounces the initial letters of “Jesus Christ.” If one turned the spiritual eyes only once to such matters which are really considered even today as fantastic, somebody would already think that the spirits of the higher hierarchies work unconsciously in the human development, and would then find something significant in the matters which one takes for granted today.

I want only to mention a really significant fact. One calls a certain group of European human beings Germanic people or Teutons. And while one speaks in Central Europe of Germanic people (“Germanen”), one includes England, Holland, Norway, Sweden and still others. One expands the concept of the Germanic people. I do not talk out of agitation, but out of that which is given in the language. The English do not speak of themselves as Germanic people, because they call only the Germans Germanic people. The German calls himself “deutsch,” and if he speaks of Germanic people, he encloses a bigger group of human beings. The English apply the term Germans only to the Germans, to those who are not like “him.” This is a tremendously significant fact. It is something that is in the deepest sense typical for the kind in which way on the one side and on the other the folk-spirit works; he works in Central Europe to embrace a bigger entity and the folk-spirit of the English people takes care to put away that and only to apply it to the other.

That will be obvious to the human beings gradually in a wonderful way which the language teaches as the outflow of the effective folk spirituality. Now one is little understood if one speaks about the different European peoples as I tried it some years before this war—not caused at all by the war—in the cycle The Mission of the Individual Folk-Souls in Connection with the Germanic-Nordic Mythology. This is understood in such a way, as if I wanted to express any value judgments. But I do not want to express value judgments, but only a characteristic. We can now characterise the West-European peoples expressing exactly what I expressed in this lecture cycle.

We know that the soul of the human being consists of the sentient soul, the intellectual soul or mind-soul and the consciousness-soul, and the ego which works in these three soul nuances. If we look at the Italian nation with its folk-spirit, we find the peculiarity that there the folk-spirit inspires the sentient soul. This is the typical of the Italian people, that the folk-spirit inspires the sentient soul. If now something is possessed by the luciferic folk-spirit, it is also the folk-spirit. Imagine that on one side the brilliant aspect of the Italian people is based on the fact that the sentient soul is inspired. Think of Dante, of all the great Italian artists. But this people also identify themselves, on the other hand, with something superhuman that lagged behind luciferically in all the passionate impulses of development which appear within the Italian people. I do not pronounce any value judgment, but I characterise it only.

We can see everywhere with the French people the folk-spirit inspiring the intellectual soul or mind-soul.

With the British people it is the consciousness-soul. The consciousness-soul is for the present human cycle that which connects the human being mostly with the external physical world. Hence, this nation which is inspired in the consciousness-soul is entrusted above all with the task of furthering the materialistic civilisation. No value judgment is expressed again, but it is characterised only that just the British nation has a vocation to get the consciousness-soul inspired. In so far as the individual human being belongs to his nation, in so far as he is inspired by the luciferic folk-spirit, he identifies himself with the purely materialistic civilisation of the present. We find this really in the British culture. Like the individual human being positions himself in the British nation, this comes out what is just the materialistic spirit of the British nation, this peculiar spirit who waged thirty-four wars of conquest from 1856 up to 1900 and made fifty-seven million people new British subjects, and who pretends to stand up for the liberty of single human groups in our time.

If we consider such a time like ours, we must absolutely be clear to us that just this time teaches people very much to feel like an admonition what one puts up now as the contrast of the single national groups of Europe or of a big part of the earth. The members of thirty-four nationalities—apart from minor tribal differences—are in war with each other. One should regard this as an admonition to refrain really from that which one has called history up to now. But this approach is used just for the time being still up to nonsense. We find it really driven up to nonsense what the individual nations of Europe reproach each other for everything. One weighs up the single external facts to discover the causes of this dreadful war. But just this war will teach people that one finds nothing in its external causes, but at most external symptoms of that which exists deeply hidden in the human groups by the guidance of advanced and retarded spiritual beings. The ordeals of this time force us to appeal to the spiritual subsoil in which the causes of the external events in the world can be found today.

From the most different sides one can show how in the subsoil of the consciousness that works which appears externally. I want to point, although most of the friends already know this example, once again to the fact that the whole map of Europe was determined towards the end of the Middle Ages by the Maid of Orleans who intervened in the war between England and France. Everybody who looks understanding at our external history has to recognise that the map of Europe would have turned out quite differently if at that time England had not been defeated by France because the Maid of Orleans intervened in the fight. But the Maid of Orleans was not a qualified strategist; she was no one who stood at the summit of education. She was a simple human child—a farmer girl. But the spirits of the higher hierarchies worked through her in the way as they had to work in this time. It has been absolutely necessary up to our time that these spirits worked in the subconscious because the human beings could not yet understand what must now be understood spiritual-scientifically.

The intervention of spiritual beings in the subconsciousness is often nicely expressed in legends. And rightly, not because of superstition, but because it really corresponds to facts, one set particular store by the time when the external world has withdrawn mostly from the year, the time from Christmas up to the sixth January. If one does not want to attain spiritual knowledge in the way, as we do today using the instructions given in How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?, but in a more elementary way, one could be inspired in these thirteen nights. This is expressed, for example, very nicely in the Norwegian legend of Olaf Åsteson. This legend relates that Olaf Åsteson goes to the church before Christmas; that he falls asleep before the church and sleeps during thirteen nights. He wakes up at the Epiphany day and is really able to tell his experience. What he tells there figuratively in a clear, but primitive way corresponds to that we call the passage through the soul-world and the passage through the spirit-land. Olaf Åsteson experienced that in the time in which Christmas was rightly put. This makes it clear to us that the clairvoyance of a nature child could be developed best of all during these thirteen nights from Christmas till Epiphany.

Because the Maid of Orleans was such a nature child, one could assume that she would have experienced the world in these thirteen nights in a sort of dreamy state of which she spoke when she led the French army against the English that she would have been inspired in these thirteen nights. This happened in a peculiar way. Every human being experiences a sleeping state, a state when the senses do not yet speak, namely in the body of the mother, before he sees the physical earth light. This is still a kind of sleeping state, and the ripest state is that during the last thirteen days before birth. This is the great thing and fills our souls with such amazement: the Maid of Orleans is born on the sixth January. She went through the inspiration actually in the thirteen nights, but before she opened her eyes to the earth light. That is why the sixth January is noted as the birthday of the Maid of Orleans intentionally in our calendar. We have to understand that in its big world-historical connection; since it can say to us how mysterious the connections are in the world and how mysterious forces work in the world. Mysterious powers worked in those days on the sixth January, because people gathered in the little village where the Maid of Orleans was born in the morning; where the animals themselves behaved so wonderfully. On this sixth January, an inspiration could be finished. In thirteen nights a being could be inspired which was disposed by its own karma. Of course, not everybody who is born on the sixth January is disposed, but karma has to coincide with the other conditions.

I wanted to give this example of the Maid of Orleans which shows us so surely how subterranean powers intervene in the historical development. Indeed, the materialistic development of the following centuries came then. It is completely comprehensible that this had to consider such tips to historical backgrounds as insanity. This does not harm; even it does not harm at all if today people still look at this spiritual science like insanity. This spiritual science will be accepted finally.

But such significant events, within which the human beings of the present time live and in which they themselves incarnated to take part in them in one or another way, do not always mean the same in the historical development. Today these destiny-burdened events mean an admonition to the human beings. Such a flood of literature has been written about this war, but in everything that appeared in books, pamphlets and so on we do not yet find this from which one has to assume, actually, that it is found and that it must be found bit by bit. One often hears: one can talk about the causes not really, maybe after the war, maybe people find the true causes of this war from documents only after decades and know who was to blame for it.—You can read this in every third newspaper. But that does not concern, it concerns that which one finds—and just as a result of this time—that the real causes are not to be seen in these external occasions, but that one has to look for the causes in the spiritual world. One will find that this war was the significant karma of materialism which must be experienced, so that the human beings take up a sum of convictions in them leading from materialism to spiritualism. Humankind must experience this ordeal.

What does happen basically today in such a distressing way round us?—We know, when the human being goes through the gate of death, he leaves his physical body behind in the physical world. He enters in the spiritual world with his etheric body, astral body and ego. He soon takes off the etheric body which is given to the remaining world. Then he goes with astral body and ego through the soul-land, through the spirit-land. But imagine now that today a big number of human beings goes through the gate of death in relatively short time and with a particular consciousness; that they take off etheric bodies which could have supplied, so to speak, their lives normally still for decades. If a human being dies between the twentieth and thirtieth years, he takes off an etheric body which could have supplied his physical body for sixty to seventy years. The forces are in the etheric body, because nothing gets lost also in the spiritual world. All human beings, who go today in the prime of life through the gate of death, hand over to the world etheric bodies which could still have maintained their lives for a long time. These forces are there in the spiritual world. How are they there, these forces?—I may give you an illustrative example of the significance of such a phenomenon which is taken from our circle itself.

Last autumn, a family belonging to our anthroposophical circle lost a little son, a dear boy of seven years. The external circumstances were exceptionally tragic ones. The father had been called up to the army as a German citizen; he just fell ill and was in the military hospital. One evening, even as a lecture took place in Dornach where our construction is built, somebody informed us that the little seven-year-old boy was missing. He had not come home since the evening. I have to mention that the family has settled down in Dornach as a gardener family. I had come from Germany to Switzerland shortly before. The boy had already met me before the construction and shaken my hand; it was a sunny very dear child. In that evening, we were informed that the boy was missing. Now one could imagine nothing else, as that a removal van, which had brought pieces of furniture for our members, had toppled over and fallen on the boy near the construction. You must also take into consideration that since countless years no removal van went at that place or since that time. You must think further: the boy lived with his mother who manages the garden. He was such a dear boy that he said to his mother when the father had to go; now he would muck in, because the father is not there any more.

That evening, he had been sent to the so-called canteen to get something for his mother. It was not far at all; it is only a short way between the canteen and the flat of the mother. On this short way is a crossroad, so that the removal van had to do a bend. Now the boy intended to leave, actually, ten minutes sooner, was detained by somebody who wanted to go with him. If he had left sooner and through the door through which he was used to leave, he would have passed the carriage sooner and on its left side, while he went now on the right. Because he left later, through another door and on the right side of the removal van, the carriage when it tipped over fell just on the boy. People had looked at this, also those who were busy with the horses. Nobody anticipated that the boy had got under the carriage. Then one said: The carriage is too heavy to lift it still this evening, tomorrow we do this.—Between five and six o'clock p. m. this had happened. We had definitely to lift the carriage a quarter past ten o'clock. At twelve o'clock it was lifted; and we recovered the dead child.

The first thing I would like to mention is that just such an example is suited to show how wrongly people think concerning life. I would like to give an often used comparison for this wrong thinking. Assuming, you see a person in some distance who goes along a riverside. Suddenly you see the person falling into the river. You run to that place and you find a stone at the same place. Of course, you say, the person tripped over the stone, fell into the water, and found his death that way. However, the matter can be completely different; it could be the other way round. The man could have experienced a heart failure. He fell into the water, because he was dead before; and he did not find his death, because he fell into the water. This mistake is done any minute, in the natural sciences in particular. One does not notice it, of course, if it is well hidden.

That was also the case concerning this child. The karma of this child had run off. The removal van went there because of the child. The spiritual beings who exist behind the secret arranged the matter in such a way that the child could find its death. The boy was seven years old. The rather youthful etheric body would have supplied life for many decades, its forces were there. Now, I will always confess what it means that since some time our Dornach construction is embedded in the enlarged etheric body of the little boy Theodor Faiss. The etheric body is increased—it grows after death,—and the etheric body of this little seven-year-old Theo forms something like an aura of the construction since that time. If one deals with the construction, if one needs to find ideas for the construction which put himself rightly in the spiritual world, since the death of this boy he knows that he is co-inspired by the etheric body which is involved in the aura of the construction, the etheric body of the little Theo Faiss.

Of course, no longing to appear original could inveigle me into denying that a lot is co-inspired by that which contributed to the construction since that time, because the aura of this etheric body is round the construction, and one has, as it were, this help that this unused etheric strength works in favour of the construction. Imagine which important internal facts are behind the external facts: a family moves their residence near to the construction. There is a boy, especially gifted by his soul-being; he sacrifices his etheric body, so that the construction is wrapped up in the strength of this etheric body. There we have such an example at which we see that unused sacrificed etheric bodies have their task in the world.

There only that begins basically which should flow as the sentient content from our spiritual science. That one knows, the human being consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego, that one goes through different lives on earth—one knows that in theory, it does not matter really. But it matters that which is inserted in our real experience by these views. One tries to bring life also into our movement and to overcome the difference between the living and the dead not only theoretically by teaching, but by life. When recently a very dear assistant, Fritz Mitscher, was snatched away from us just in his thirtieth year, and I had to hold the address at the cremation in Basel, an important word consisted in the fact that I turned to this soul, I would like to say, begged him to continue working among us after death. For we do not only need the so-called living, but we need the cooperation of those who have gone through the gate of death. They will co-operate in a double way. On one side, a big number of etheric bodies co-operate in the next time which the human beings have taken off going through the gate of death in the destiny-burdened events.

Youthful unused etheric bodies form a big aura in which we live. On the other side are the individualities themselves who work on from their etheric bodies. We can look at the unused etheric body at the example of the little Theo Faiss where the etheric body becomes the inspirator for something that was achieved in the construction. I would look at the individuality of Fritz Mitscher in my address. It is the task of our spiritual science to feel how the abyss between life and death is filled. It must become conscious content of our earth times not only to know in theory, but to penetrate vividly that which the dead are to us like the living that the dead give something like the youthful, unused etheric bodies. In these etheric bodies, which belonged to the human beings who have now found their death as a result of the big destiny-burdened events, the echoes live of everything that is felt if one considers death as a sacrifice for the events demanded by this time—more or less consciously. This goes into these etheric bodies.

Looking for death, or properly speaking, foreseeing death and nevertheless knowing that this death has a meaning, this will be the case with the numerous human beings going through the gate of death in the present. One can be a materialist; if one exists in such a way, one may say: folk-souls, folk-spirits are only names for something that in the abstract holds together a group of human beings of the same language and the same characteristics. Speaking of folk-spirits as of real beings is a weirdie.—Some people going now through the gate of death may speak that way according to the words; because they go through death they agree unconsciously to that which spiritual science has to say that a folk-soul, a folk-spirit is a real being. For what would it mean if folk-spirits, folk-souls were not real beings and the human beings stand on all sides in this bloody war?

Provided a materialistic world creation it would be impossible to imagine that. If the individual human being sacrifices himself for the folk-spirit, if the folk-spirit is a real being to him, it has the deepest sense that such events have befallen the human beings. Thus we will feel the next time in which many unspent etheric bodies float in the spiritual atmosphere admonishing everybody that there is something spiritual. These etheric bodies are good assistants in future to deepen the human world view spiritually. The human beings have only to feel the dead calling in their souls. When again peace holds sway over the fields on which now the dreadful events take place, the human beings who live then will work much better if they hear the voices of the dead. But this is meant not only symbolically. The unspent etheric bodies are calling. The world cannot exist in future without the human beings feeling their connection with the spiritual world. Humankind of the future would turn out lifeless if it were not able to hear the admonitions of the dead.

In physics, everybody admits that energy does not get lost; one speaks of the transformation of energy. That also applies to the spiritual realm. The forces the unused etheric body carries through the gate of death do not disappear; they will be there. They can be taken up in the souls of the future, and these souls can receive strength and confidence for their spiritual work from the connection with the soul leftovers which remained from unused etheric bodies.

Beside many things this war can say to us, it is for us as supporters of spiritual science above all that we already look up in spirit at the atmosphere of the unused etheric bodies. However, here below souls have to be who have a feeling for the admonitions of the dead. It belongs to our task as supporters of spiritual science to bring about that. We must already find a spiritual point of view also towards such events, not the point of view of an abstract thinking. But we must really imagine the future population of the earth in such a way that below souls exist who are in the physical bodies, and from above forces of unused etheric bodies work; and that these souls below can say: we have no doubts that better times come for the spiritual cognition, because the unused etheric bodies help us with their forces.—If we take this specifically, not in the abstract, we have understood something of the admonitions which this destiny-burdened time can give us in particular as supporters of spiritual science. It must take place that way, because real effects in the human development are necessary. We would have to work on for long times if we had to intellectually convince people of that which the spiritual-scientific world view wants to give. With the Maid of Orleans a subconscious initiation took place. In the future, spirituality works in another way in the human development. The unused etheric bodies support us and also those who as individualities want to work on the physical plane.

It is sometimes strange what people can understand also today. On account of the given example you will admit that at the time of the Maid of Orleans the strategists, the generals did not bring about that which was brought about. I have sometimes given another example: when at a determining hour the army of Constantine marched against Rome, these were not also the generals who brought about the victory and defeated the five times stronger army of Maxentius who led his armies before the gates of Rome against Constantine. Constantine followed not his generals, but a dream that said to him, he should make his armies carry the monogram of Christ. Dreams and Sibylline oracles brought the armies together at a particular place and decided everything in those days. However, because Constantine was victorious, the map of Europe got its corresponding appearance. Who steered the events in those days taking place under the threshold of consciousness? It was the Christ Impulse, but the Christ Impulse, as it was real, not as human beings understood it.

We do not get to know the Christ Impulse listening to the squabbling of the theologians. The Christ Impulse did not work in that which the human beings accomplished consciously which the human beings understood; but it worked in joining together the events with Constantine and Maxentius, and later again with the Maid of Orleans. Also in this time one experiences something, even in little facts. You can compare the little thing with the big one sometimes.

An excellent philosopher wrote a longer article about the spiritual-scientific world view represented by me some years ago in a South German monthly magazine. This article had a big effect; it was written in an opposing way, infiltrated with many a benevolent judgment about theosophy on the whole, even some acknowledging notes. For example, I got the advice instead of using my talents for such matters to find out finally whether Mickiewicz¹ is really the reincarnation of the Maid of Orleans and so on. Nevertheless, on the whole, the article was very suitable to show how our spiritual-scientific world view has to be regarded so that an inadequate impression was aroused.

The philosopher who had written the article was regarded as a great Platonist, as a great logician. He himself said that he devoted himself to no other task than to announce the truth, and, therefore, he would be able to know the truth. The editor of the magazine seemed to be very satisfied to publish such authoritative an article about this spiritual science. This was already some years ago. Then the war came. The person concerned does not belong to those who sympathise with Central Europe, but he sympathises in determined way with England and France and even with those who also fight on the side of England and France. Now what happens? He writes a number of letters to the same man, the editor of the magazine. This editor of the mentioned magazine also publishes these letters because they are too typical, in another magazine, the South German Monthly Magazine. He even reminds of the fact that he is the same man—it is Karl Muth—who publishes the magazine Hochland and printed the article about the “Steinerean theosophy,” as he says. In these letters, a West-European minded person rants at the Central European population as much as he can do. Among other things, this man explains: black people are free aristocrats compared to people who do not know anything they are fighting for. One had to compare the British Empire with Central Europe, the former were established like the Catholic Church by God and would never have done anything but what is according to the divine world order.

Printing this letter is a matter of course. The mentioned editor adds to this: in whole Central Europe nobody could be found except in madhouses who could support such a view.—Now the dear Mr. Muth admits that the man whom he had chosen to let him loose on our spiritual-scientific world view is ready, actually, for the lunatic asylum. Of such a quality are the objections generally which are raised against our spiritual-scientific world view. Only Mr. Muth would already have had to know in those days that the man is ready for the lunatic asylum. But he needed the admonition of the war. His view had to be challenged only by that which he could easily see now. Some people who are ready for the lunatic asylum walk around and criticise our world view, only it does not come to the fore so absurdly.

I said that this example shows that the reason which people have today would limp for a long time if it concerns the spiritual-scientific world view and that one must say: not only the living but also the dead are necessary that a certain quantity of spirituality comes into the world. Those belong to the best helpers who had to stand up with their souls and lives for the course of our present destiny-burdened events. That is why we would want that such considerations remain not only something theoretical in the souls, but become a deeply honest feeling, the feeling that we may bear witness of spiritual science in such a way that we know attentively that there are admonishing voices in the spiritual world saying to us: let us dead be a landmark of the spiritual deepening which must come to the human beings, because we have gone through this death with consciousness—not for our matter, but for that which is independent from us, so that we have thereby confirmed the confession of something that goes beyond the individual material human life.

If among the supporters of spiritual science those are who anticipate, feel or know the serious murmur of the dead, then something real is achieved that has to be achieved by spiritual science in the feelings of the human souls; in other words, if souls are inspired by spiritual science who know to turn their senses to the realm of spirits, because a lot is said to the human beings from the realm of spirits in the times to come.

It is this that I wanted to suggest to you for your feelings, because the circumstances were such that we can be together just in this time also in a branch meeting. One would want that at such meetings not only a knowledge as a germ is given, but that that which is spoken in such meetings would work like a living germ which is planted in the ground of the feeling soul. What you carry on from such a consideration, this is the central issue.

That is why we want to close these considerations, while we think of that which might be assigned to us from the destiny-burdened events of this time:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit-land.

• 1. Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855), Polish poet, stood up for the liberation of the Polish people from the Russian rule.

When once our construction, dedicated to spiritual science, is finished in Dornach, it contains a sculptural group at an important place. This group primarily presents three figures. In the middle of this group a figure stands as, I would like to say, the representative of the highest human which could develop on earth. Hence, one can also feel this figure of the highest human in the earth development as Christ, Who lived in the body of Jesus of Nazareth for three years within the earth development. It is the particular task to form this Christ figure in such a way that one can see, on one side, the concerning being living in a human earthly body, however, this earthly body being spiritualised in every look, in everything that is in it by Christ Who entered from cosmic, from spiritual heights in the thirtieth year of his life in this earthly body.

Then two other figures are to be found, one on the left side, the other on the right side of the Christ figure, if I am allowed to call this figure the Christ figure. This Christ figure stands there like before a rock which towers up in particular on the left side of Christ, so that its peak is above the head of the Christ figure. On top of the rock is another figure, a winged figure; but the wings are broken, and this figure falls, because it has broken wings, into the chasm. What has to be worked out artistically in particular is the way how this Christ figure raises the left arm. Because the Christ figure raises his left arm, it happens that this falling being breaks the wings. But this must not look in such a way, as if possibly Christ broke the wings of this being, but the whole must be artistically arranged so that, while Christ raises the arm, already lies in the whole movement of the hand that he has an infinite compassion, actually, also with this being. However, this being does not endure what flows up through the arm and hand and what is still visible because the fingers of the stretched hand hollowed the rock, as it were. What this being feels in itself, because it comes near to the Christ being, I would like to dress in the words: I cannot bear anything pure like that shining on me.

It is that which lives in this being and lives so substantially in this being that its wings are broken and it falls consequently into the chasm. This is one especially significant artistic task. You notice what could be missed if Christ stood there plastically and such a force were simply emitted by raising the hand, so that He breaks the wings of this being so that it falls into the chasm. Then it would be Christ who would shine on this being like with hatred and make it fall. However, this must not be shown that way, but the being should make itself fall. Since this being who is shown falling down with broken wings is Lucifer.

On the other side, toward the right side of the Christ figure where the rock has a projection the rock will be hollowed out there. In this hollow is also a winged figure. This figure turns to the rock cavity on top with his arm-like organs. You have to imagine: on the right the rock cavity and in this cavity the winged figure which has, however, quite differently formed wings than the figure on top of the rock. This figure has more aquiline wings, the figure in the cave bat-like wings. The latter figure locks itself up in the cave, you see it in chains, and you see it working there on the ground hollowing out the earth.

The Christ figure in the middle turns his right hand downwards. Whereas it turns its left hand upwards, it turns the right hand downwards. It will be a significant artistic task again not to show this in such a way, as if Christ wanted to put this figure which is Ahriman in chains, but that Christ Himself has an infinite compassion for Ahriman. However, Ahriman cannot endure this; he writhes in pains by that which the hand of Christ emits. This causes that the veins of gold, which are at the bottom in the cave, wind like strings around Ahriman's body and tie it up. Just as that which happens with Lucifer happens by himself, it also happens with Ahriman. Then we will attempt to paint the same motive above the sculptural group, but the view of the painting must be completely different from that of the sculpture. So that we have this group of three figures: Christ, Lucifer, and Ahriman as a sculpture group at the bottom and above them the same motive painted.

We put this relationship of Christ, Lucifer, and Ahriman in our Dornach building because spiritual science shows us in a certain way really that concerning the understanding of the Christ Impulse the next task is that, finally, the human being learns to know which relationship exists in the world between these three powers Christ, Lucifer, and Ahriman. Since, indeed, up to now one often talks about Christianity and the Christ Impulse, but that which has entered the world by the Christ Impulse, actually, as a result of Christ's Death and Resurrection, this has not yet become completely clear to the human beings. One speaks probably of the fact that there is Lucifer that there is Ahriman, but while one speaks of Lucifer and Ahriman, one speaks very often in such a way, as if one had to flee them, as if one had to say almost always: I want to know nothing, nothing at all about Lucifer and Ahriman.

If the divine-spiritual powers, which are found in the way, as I have described it in the public lecture yesterday, also wanted to know nothing about Lucifer and Ahriman, the world would just not be able to exist. You do not position yourselves in the correct relationship saying: Lucifer, I avoid him! Ahriman, I avoid him! You rather have to look at that which the human being has to strive for as a result of the Christ Impulse like the equilibrium position of a pendulum. The pendulum is in the middle in balance; however, it must swing to and fro. That is similar also in the earth development of the human being. The human being must tend on one side to the luciferic principle, on the other side to the ahrimanic principle, but he must learn and stand firmly on that which Paul said: “not I, but Christ in me.”

We have to understand Christ in his effectiveness absolutely as a reality. That is we must be clear to us that this really happened which flowed by Christ's Death and Resurrection in our earth development. How well or how badly people understood this up to now, it does not depend on it, but on the fact that it was there that it has worked in the human earth development. One could say a lot that people have not yet understood of the Christ Impulse. And spiritual science will contribute a little piece to the understanding of that what flowed in from spiritual heights by the Mystery of Golgotha as the Christ Impulse onto the earth development. To realise Christ's working, we want to make clear to us, as this has also happened at other places, two moments of the earth development of humankind, two moments which became important in the whole western development.

You know from history, what an important moment it was, when Constantine, the son of Constantius Chlorus, defeated Maxentius, and Christianity was introduced by Constantine externally in the western development. Constantine had to go into that important battle against Maxentius through which Constantine then made Christianity the state religion in his western empire. The whole map of Europe would have become different if in those days this battle had not taken place against Maxentius. But strategic art, that of what people were capable with their intellects in those days, did not decide this battle really, but something else.

Maxentius made read up in the so-called Sibylline Books, the prophetic books of Rome, and got the advice to lead his army out of the walls of Rome, whereas they would have been saved well within the walls. So he positioned his troops in the free field against the army of Constantine. However, Constantine had a dream before the battle which indicated to him: if you go in the sign of the Mystery of Golgotha against Maxentius, you arrive at a big goal.—And carrying the sign of the Mystery of Golgotha, the cross, Constantine went to the battle with an army about three quarters smaller than that of Maxentius. Filled with enthusiasm by the power which came from the Mystery of Golgotha, Constantine won that important battle through which Christianity was introduced externally in Europe. If we remember what people understood of the Christ Impulse with their intellects in those days, we find an endless theological quarrelling.

People quarrelled whether Christ is identical from eternity with the Father and the like more. One must say: it does not depend on that which people knew about the Christ Impulse in those days, but on the fact that it was there, the Christ Impulse, that it induced the necessary events by Constantine, by a dream of Constantine. It depends on the reality of Christ, on the real power of Christ. In our spiritual science, we only begin understanding the Christ Impulse.

Another moment was that when in the fight between France and England Europe was formed in such a way that one can say: if France had not been victorious against England in those days, all the circumstances would have become different. But how had this happened?—The Christ Impulse has just worked in the subconscious of the soul up to now, when it has to become more aware. We see then in the western spiritual development the Christ Impulse seeking for those conditions in the human souls through which it can be effective with individual human beings. Legends have preserved the way how the Christ Impulse in the western spiritual development can make itself noticeable. These legends point partly back to old pagan times, when everywhere understanding of Christianity was prepared just in paganism.

If the soul does not strive for initiation consciously in the way I have described in How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?, but gets it as it were in natural way, as it was filled with the Christ Impulse by a natural initiation. The most convenient time in which this Christ Impulse is able to inspire the soul is the time of the Christmas Eve up to the Epiphany day, the time from the 25th December to the 6th January. We can understand that if we get the following clear in our mind: for the esoteric knowledge it is unambiguously evident that our earth is not only that of which the geologists talk. That is only like the skeleton of the human being. But our earth also has its own spirituality. And Christ has just entered the earth aura. This earth sleeps and wakes as we sleep and are awake in twenty-four hours. We have to realise the fact that the earth sleeps during the summertime and is awake in the wintertime. The spirit of the earth is the most awake in these twelve or thirteen nights from Christmas to Epiphany. In olden times, in which—as you know from the various representations in my lectures—the human beings had a dreamlike clairvoyance and experienced the spiritual principle of the world that way. The most convenient time was the summertime. It is quite natural that somebody who wants to rise in a more dreamlike clairvoyance to the spiritual has it easier during the sleeping time of the earth, in the summertime. Hence, it was the St. John's-tide which was the most convenient in olden times to raise the strength of the soul to the spiritual. The new, more conscious way has replaced the old way in which the spiritual was working into the earth; now it is the best time when the earth is awake.

Hence, the legends tell us that especially gifted human beings, human beings who are particularly suitable because of their karma, get a special condition of consciousness at the Yuletide which is only externally similar to sleep but inspires it internally, so that the human being was raised to the world we call the spirit-land. There is a very nice legend, the Norwegian legend of Olaf Åsteson about whom is told to us that he goes to the church at the Christmas Eve, falls into a sleep-like state and wakes up at the sixth January and can tell what he experienced in this state similar to sleep. This Norwegian legend actually explains to us that Olaf Åsteson experienced something that one feels at first like the soul-world, then something that one feels like the spirit-land, only just everything in pictures, in Imaginations.

This time was the most convenient in those epochs in which the human beings were not yet so advanced as in our time. Today, the times are over in which the Christ Impulse can flow into the souls like by a natural initiation. Today, the human beings have to ascend to initiation as consciously as it is described in How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? We live in a time in which natural initiations become rarer and rarer and completely disappear, finally, so that we do not have to count any more on them. But, basically, one can call a physical initiation that through which the Christ Impulse worked on the soul of the simple farmer girl, the Maid of Orleans, who brought about the victory of the French over the English. This victory reshaped the European map wondrously. The human reason could not perform that, but that which guided the Maid of Orleans in those days and outstripped all the skill of the military leaders, by which Europe got a new figure. It was the Christ Impulse, which worked on the unconscious of a single personality, but worked so that then from this personality spread out what was efficient in history.

We would have to notice if anything similar could have taken place as a natural initiation with the Maid of Orleans if the soul of the Maid of Orleans had been inspired in the nights from the 25th December to the 6th January. In the course of life it seems that such a matter cannot be verified that the Maid of Orleans also was once during twelve or thirteen days from the 25th December to the 6th January in a sleep-like state in which the Christ Impulse would have worked on her, so that she would be able to work as a human being only like the cover of the Christ Impulse on the battlefields of France. Nevertheless, it was that way. For there is a time which—if the karma of the concerning individuality makes it possible—can be filled with such a sleep-like state. This is the time of the last days in which the human being still lives in the body of the mother, before he sees the physical earth light. The human being lives there in a dreamlike state similar to sleep. He has not yet seen anything by the senses that takes place externally in the world. If a human being were particularly suitable by his karma to take up the Christ Impulse during these last days in which he lives in the body of the mother, these days would also be days of the natural initiation. Then such a human being would open his eyes for the first time already strengthened by the Christ Impulse lying in him after the initiation, that means in this case, after his birth. And such a human being would have to be born on the 6th January. The Maid of Orleans was born on the 6th January. This is the secret of the Maid of Orleans that she was born on the 6th January that she spent the time from Christmas up to the Epiphany day in that peculiar state similar to sleep in the body of the mother and got a natural initiation. Consider the deep connections which are behind the external development which one normally calls history. What is shown externally in history with the help of documents is as a rule even the most insignificant. The simple date which is registered in our calendar that the Maid of Orleans was sent into the world on the 6th January is of authoritative historical significance. The forces work from the supersensible realm on the sensory realm that way. We have to read this occult writing which shows us the forces working from the supersensible realm on the sensory realm. So the Christ Impulse flowed into the Maid of Orleans like by a natural initiation, already before her physical birth.

I want to explain these matters to arouse a feeling in you that forces and connections unknown to the external view are effective behind that what one normally calls history. However, the Christ Impulse guides history, of the European humankind in particular, since the Mystery of Golgotha. In the East, in Asia a world view remained of which one can say: it has not yet approached the Christ Impulse in its feelings. Indeed, the European was enticed to call the Indian views particularly deep. But this is the typical of Hinduism—generally of the whole Asian religious feeling—that it stands with all its feelings before the Christ Impulse, but has preserved the state which was there in the religious feeling of the earthly humankind before the Christ Impulse. Lagging behind in the development always means taking up something luciferic. Hence, the Asian religious development carries a luciferic element in itself. If we look over at the Asian religious development, we must notice: indeed, we can see a lot in it that humankind had already once that it had to leave, however. But we have partly to purify that all in the western culture from the luciferic element, to raise it partly in such a way that the Christ-principle can flow into it.

If we go from Asia to Europe, we find in the east of Europe, in the Russian culture, the orthodox Christianity spread out which has stopped on a former level of the Christian development which did not want to go along which wanted to keep something luciferic. Briefly, we look at the East, we have what, I would like to say, the wise guidance of the world left behind in the whole development of humankind as the luciferic element.

Let us look at the West, particularly at the American civilisation, and then we have another characteristic. The typical of this American civilisation is that everything is searched for in the external. A lot of significant things are thereby produced indeed; but everything is searched for in the outside. Take an example. If we see in Europe, in particular in Central Europe, that a human being who did not have any opportunity in his life at first to turn his soul to Christ and the powers of the spiritual world and suddenly changes his life because of something, then interests us what has taken place in his soul. It does not interest us that he experienced a jump in his development, we find this everywhere.

Since most inaccurate is the saying which the external science has stamped: nature does not make jumps.¹—From the green plant leaf to the red petal is a big jump; from the petal to the chalices is again a big jump. It is an absolutely wrong saying, and the truth of the development is based just on the fact that everywhere jumps are made. The fact that a human being if he has lived for a while so externally is able to tend suddenly to spirituality induced by anything, in that we are not interested in particular. But the internal power which achieves such a conversion to spirituality interests us. We want to look into the soul of such a human being; we want to know what brought him to such a conversion. We are interested in the soul.

How does the American make it?—He makes something very peculiar. In America, one could often observe such conversions. Now, the American lets such people write letters who experienced a conversion. Then he puts all these letters together on a small heap and says: I received letters from two hundred people, more or less. Fourteen percent of those who experienced such a conversion wrote that they were suddenly attacked by fear of death or hell; five percent because of altruistic motives; seventeen percent because of striving for moral ideals; fifteen percent experienced pangs of conscience; ten percent because they observed teachings given to them; thirteen percent because they have seen that others were converted—by imitation; nineteen percent because they were forced, while they were thrashed at the suitable age, and so on. One selects the most extreme souls, sorts them and receives a result which is based on “sure data.” That is registered then in the books which one spreads as “psychology” among people. All the other documents are uncertain to these people, are only based on subjectivity, they say. There you have an example that something innermost is made superficial. That holds true in many respects in America. In the time which demands a particular spiritual deepening the most superficial spiritualism is rampant in America. One wants to have everything as something sensory.

Spiritual life is grasped materialistically that way. We could still give many such examples which would show you that the civilisation of the West is seized by Ahriman. This is the other deflection of the pendulum. If we look at the East, we have the luciferic element, if we look at the West, we have the ahrimanic element. The infinitely important task we have in Central Europe between West and East is to find the balance. Hence, we would like to put the biggest of the spiritual demands of our time in our Dornach building as a sculptural group: to find the balance between the relation to Lucifer and the relation to Ahriman. Then one will only recognise what the Christ Impulse wanted from the earth development if one puts outside Christ not so simply, but if one knows correctly that Christ is that power which shows us the relation to Lucifer and Ahriman exemplarily.

That the relation of the human being and Christ to Lucifer and Ahriman is not yet recognised clearly, this may become illustrative to you by the following. Also the greatest, which contains the greatest in one respect, is not always free of that which must still be there as an one-sidedness in time. Indeed, one cannot appreciate that picture enough which Michelangelo painted in the Sistine Chapel in Rome, The Last Judgement, this miraculous picture. Christ triumphing, directing the good human beings to one side, the bad human beings to the other. Let us look at this Christ. He does not have the features which we would like to give the Christ figure that should stand in our Dornach construction. It must become evident that Christ raises the hand in compassion, even though Lucifer is there above. Lucifer should not be brought down by the power of Christ, but he falls down because he cannot endure what shines from Christ in his nearness. Christ raises his eye and folds the forehead while raising the folded forehead to Lucifer.

Ahriman is overcome not by the hatred of Christ, but he feels that he cannot endure what flows out from Christ. However, Christ stands in the midst as somebody who introduces the Parzival element in the modern age. He has to get the others to overcome themselves not by His power, but by His existence, so that they overcome themselves and not he overcomes them. With Michelangelo, we still see Christ sending the good human beings to heaven and the bad ones to hell by His power. This is not the right Christ in future, but this is a Christ who is still very luciferic. That does not reduce our esteem of that picture. The whole significance of this picture is recognised, but one has to admit that Michelangelo could not yet paint Christ because the world development was not yet so far. It must clearly be seen that one has not only to turn the sense to Christ, but that one has to turn the sense to the threefold being: Christ, Lucifer, and Ahriman. I can only indicate that. Only in future, spiritual science finds out everything that lies in this secret: Christ in relation to Lucifer and Ahriman.

But now consider the following: if we look at the East, we look at luciferic powers even in the near East. In the West, we look at ahrimanic powers. In spiritual science, we have to get into the habit of considering the matters not with sympathy and antipathy and also the peoples and folk-souls not with sympathy and antipathy, but in such a way as they are in their characteristics. What one calls the national characteristic of a human being who stands in his people, depends—above all—on that which is effective in the physical and etheric bodies. When we live from falling asleep to waking up with our soul and mind as an astral body and ego, we live beyond the normal national element. We live only from waking up to falling asleep in our nationality when we are in our physical body. That is why the nationality is also something the human being overcomes gradually during his stay in kamaloka. The human being there strives for the generally human, while he overcomes the nationality in kamaloka to live then in the generally human for the longest time between death and new birth. It belongs to the qualities which are taken off in kamaloka, also that which makes us a national human being.

The single nationalities are very different from each other in this regard. Compare a French human being and a Russian human being. The French human being has the characteristic that he seizes that particularly which the folk-soul brings in his physical and etheric bodies during his life between birth and death that he lives particularly in it. This expresses itself in the fact that the Frenchman—not as an individual human being but as a Frenchman—has an idea of that which is a Frenchman; the fact that he puts ahead that above all which is, actually, a Frenchman. But these ideas which the French, also all the other neo-Latin peoples, have of their nationality cause that the ideas of their nationality are deeply stamped into their etheric bodies. When the Frenchman goes through the gate of death, he already detaches the etheric body after some days; then this etheric body is a clearly defined figure which exists in the etheric world for a long time. The etheric body cannot dissolve because the ideas of his nationality are deeply stamped on it; these ideas hold together the etheric body. That is why we see the field of death filled with clearly defined etheric bodies if we look westwards.

Look at the East now, at the Russian human being. It is the peculiarity of this Russian human being that he has such an etheric body in himself that it dissolves relatively quickly when the soul goes through the gate of death. This is the difference between the West and the East. The etheric bodies, which the West-European human beings take off after death, have the peculiarity that they want to be clearly defined. What the French calls “gloire” stamps itself to his etheric body firmly as national gloire, so that he is condemned to turn his spiritual view to this etheric body, to himself for long, long times after death. The Russian human being, however, looks at himself only a little after death. That is why the West-European human being is exposed to the ahrimanic influence; the materialisation of the etheric body is again exposed to the ahrimanic principle. The dissolution of the etheric body, the quick merging of the etheric body is accompanied by a feeling of lust, and this is just the peculiar, an instinctive feeling of lust in the national. How is this expressed in the East?

Central Europe does not understand that, as it also does not feel in that. If one pursues Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy or others who were setting the tone who talk always about the “Russian human being,” this is a feeling of lust in the national which cannot define itself. Even with Solovyov, we find that something sultry is living in his philosophy that is not compatible with the clearness and cleanness the Central European human being searches for. What is effective in Europe as a spiritual power is connected with all that. In Central Europe another, a middle state exists, namely something that one could explain even further than it was possible in the public lecture yesterday. I said: something exists in Central Europe that is an inner striving nature. Goethe would have written his Faust in exactly the same way in the forties of the last century: strive again and again.—But this striving is innermost nature. In Central Europe, the mystics appeared who did not only want to recognise the divine-spiritual, but wanted to experience it with their own souls. The mystics wanted to internally experience the Christ event. If one takes Solovyov, one thinks that he goes out above all from that: Christ died once historically for humankind. This is quite right, but Solovyov sees the spiritual life like a cloud outside himself, who sees that as it were everything already has happened, while the Central European human being demands that everybody experiences Christ in himself time and again. Master Eckhart would have possibly replied the following even to somebody like Solovyov. If Solovyov emphasised repeatedly that Christ must go through death, so that the human being can be a human being, Master Eckhart would say: you look at Christ as one looks at something external. It does not matter that we always look at the historical events only, but we ourselves have to experience Christ inside, we have to discover something inside that goes through such states like Christ, at least spiritually, so that Christ is experienced spiritually.

It seems tricky and fantastic indeed if anybody says to the modern humankind: the whole development, even the folk-soul worked in Central Europe, so that this connection of the ego with the Christ principle is expressed in the language: I-CH (= I) = Jesus Christ. I-CH which is composed in such a way that it means “I.” While one pronounces I (ich) in Central Europe, one pronounces the name of Christ. So near one wants to feel the ego with Christ, so intimately connected with it. One knows this intimate living together with the spiritual world, as it must be striven for in Central Europe in any spiritual field, neither in the West nor in the East. Hence, something must happen in the twentieth century, so that the Christ-principle can spread out gradually over the whole European continent in suitable way. I emphasised it often in various lecture cycles that in November 1879 that spiritual being whom we call the archangel Michael ascended to a special level of development. Michael became, so to speak, the leading spirit. Now this leading spirit prepares the event which I indicated in the first of my mystery dramas as the appearance of the etheric Christ over the earth, the event which must take place in the twentieth century. Then it will happen that single souls at first, then more and more souls know: Christ is there in reality, Christ walks again on earth, but in an etheric figure, not in a physical figure.

This must be prepared. If in the course of this twentieth century the spiritual eyes of certain souls were opened clairvoyantly—and this will happen—for the life of the etheric world, they would be disturbed by those etheric bodies which spread out from Western Europe. They would behold them first, and one would see the figure of Christ wrongly. Hence, Michael must fight a battle in Europe. He has to contribute something that these West-European clearly defined etheric bodies are dissolved in the etheric world. For that he has to take those etheric bodies which enjoy dissolving, the etheric bodies in the East, and must fight with them against the West. This causes that since 1879 a violent struggle prepares itself in the astral world between the Russian and the West-European etheric bodies, and this struggle is raging in the whole astral world. It is actually a violent struggle in the astral world, led by Michael, between Russia and France. This forms the basis of the battle in the astral world, raging in Europe.

As we are often stupefied by the fact that something that takes place here in the physical world is the opposite of that in the spiritual,² managed by Ahriman's seduction, which is based mainly on the ahrimanic element, namely on twenty billions which France gave Russia, is the physical expression of a battle that is raging between French and Russian souls, of a battle in which Central Europe is put with its striving for meeting the Christ in its innermost soul element. And Europe is enslaved by karma that one has to experience just in Central Europe tragically what the East with the West and the West with the East has to fight out. The matters which externally the German element has to fight out with the French element are to be understood only in such a way that the German is just in the middle between the East and the West and serves as an anvil for both sides. Since that which is pushed together by both sides in Germany is negotiated by these both sides in truth. This is the spiritual truth which is completely different from the external events in the physical world. Imagine how different the spiritual truth is from the external events in the physical world. Indeed, everything like that sounds absurd to the modern human beings, but it is the truth. This truth must stupefy us.

But another matter is also exceptionally significant. Indeed, it counters everything that history can show us that England, after it was always an ally of Turkey against Russia, must fight now suddenly with Russia against Turkey. One can understand this gainsay if one does the following occult observation. While here below on the physical plane England is an ally of Russia and fights against the Turkish element, the following presents to the occult observation. If one observes this struggle clairvoyantly and looks as it were from below up at the physical plane and then at the astral plane, it becomes apparent: in the North, Russia seems to be allied with England, and in the South-East Turkey seems to be allied with England. This is due to the fact that the alliance between England and Russia has significance only on the physical plane, but there is no reflection in the spiritual world, because it is completely based on material interests. From below one sees England and Russia united only on the physical plane in the North. In the South-East, one sees through the physical plane to the astral plane where the English are allies of the Turks and are fighting against Russia. On one side, England fights together with Russia on the physical plane, and on the other side Russia is combated by England. We have to look at the external events this way, in so far as they manifest themselves as external history. Since that which lies behind is something completely different.

A time will come in which the human beings talk about the present events quite differently than it happens now. One must say that the whole war literature has something rather unpleasant. Something pleasant is also said, but also a lot of unpleasant things. Above all one matter is unpleasant. It is always said: today one cannot yet speak about the question: who is responsible for the war? Et cetera.—People console themselves passing over the matters. They say: in future one finds out of the documents in the archives, who was responsible for the war.—Concerning the external events the matter, however, is not hard to be found at all if one judges without passion. Chamberlain³ is right in his “war articles” even if he is mistaken in the details, when he says that one can know the most certain just about this war. This is right that no doubt exists about that, only one has to put the right question. A question can only be answered unambiguously, for example, if it is put correctly. It is the question: who could have prevented this war?

The always returning question: who is responsible for this war? And still many other questions, are not just right. Who could have prevented the war?—No other answer can be given than: the Russian government could have prevented the war.—One will only be able to find the right definition of the impulses which work in detail. Of course, the war, intended by the East since decades, could not have come unless a certain relation had existed between England, Russia, and France, so that one can ascribe the bigger guilt also—if one wants—to England. But all these matters do not take into consideration which causes are behind that showing the whole world war as a necessity. It is naive to think that the war could have failed to come. Now the people talk, as if this war did not need to come. It is the result of the European karma.

I wanted to indicate something by the spiritual contrasts between the East and the West. It does not depend on the fact that we ask, so to speak, for the outer causes in particular, because they are not important. We must only know that this war is a historical necessity. The single causes are not important there.

But all the heterogeneous effects to which we will have to position ourselves correctly are important. One effect can appear to us as particularly important. It is a great, typical phenomenon that such a war produces many unused etheric bodies. Because this is the biggest war which humankind has waged in its conscious historical development, this characteristic also exists to a very high degree. Unused etheric bodies are produced. The etheric body can supply the human being for long, until the human being is seventy, eighty, or ninety years old. However, during the war human beings are sacrificed in the prime of life. When the human being goes through the gate of death, he takes off the etheric body, as you know, after a short time; but the etheric body of somebody who was killed in action is taken off in such a way that it could still have supplied this human life in a physical body for long, for decades.

In physics one accepts that energy does not get lost. However, that also applies to spirituality. The forces of these etheric bodies, which early go to the etheric world, remain available. Think now that countless unused etheric bodies of those are there who go as young human beings through the gate of death. Nevertheless, it is something particular with these etheric bodies. I would like to explain this at an example which is obvious to our movement and to lead then to the etheric bodies of the warriors gone through death which are contained in the etheric world in the next future.

In this autumn, we experienced the death of the little son of an anthroposophical family which is employed in the area of our Dornach construction. This boy, Theodor Faiss, was seven years old. His father once lived in Stuttgart, and then he came as a gardener to Dornach in the area of the construction and lived there with his family. He himself was soon called up to the army after outbreak of the war and was in a military hospital at the time of the accident. The little, seven-year-old Theodor was a real sunny child, a wonderful, dear boy. Now one day the following happened. We had just a lecture as I give them in Dornach after the construction work. After the lecture somebody came and reported that the little Theodor Faiss has not come back to his mother since the late afternoon. It was ten o'clock in the evening, and one could imagine nothing but that a big tragedy has happened. A removal van had arrived in this afternoon and had gone a way near the so-called canteen where it had to turn round. This carriage had reached a place in those days, in which, one is allowed to state this, no such a big carriage has gone for many decades before, generally maybe no removal van has ever gone and just as little after. Now the little Theodor, before this van had turned round, had been in the canteen. He had been detained there a little bit, otherwise he would have gone sooner with the provisions he had got in the canteen for the dinner. Then he went the way home—it is only a short distance—so that he was just at that place where the van toppled over and fell on him, the little Theodor. Nobody had noticed it, even the coachman did not. He had only got his horses to safety when the carriage toppled over, and did not know that the child was under it. When the absence of the child was reported to us, we had to try to lift the carriage. The friends got tools, and the mobilised Swiss soldiers helped us. Of course, the child was already dead since possibly a half past five o'clock in the afternoon. The removal van had crushed it straight away, it died of suffocation.

There we have such a case to which one can apply what I often tried to make clear using a comparison that one confuses cause and effect. Imagine that we see a person going along a riverbank. The person falls into the river. One runs to him and finds a stone where the person fell into the river and thinks that the person tripped, then fell in the river and died this way. One says that the person has died because he fell into the river. But if one dissects him, one maybe finds that he experienced a heart attack and fell consequently dead into the water. He did not die because he fell into the water, but he fell into the water because he died. You find such mistakes of cause and effect in the judgement of life very frequently and in the usual science even more.

The karma of the little Theodor had run off in a certain way, so that one can really say: he ordered the carriage to that place. I mention this case which is externally exceptionally tragic, because we deal with the etheric body of a child which could have supplied through the life of this child still for decades. This etheric body is passed over with its unused forces to the spiritual world, the etheric world. Where is he? What does he do?—Somebody who is obliged to work on the Dornach construction since that time with artistic intentions, generally to have thoughts in the area of the construction knows if he beholds clairvoyantly at the same time: this whole etheric body and its forces is increased in the aura of the Dornach construction. We have to distinguish: the individuality is somewhere else, it goes its own way, but the etheric body is expelled after some days and exists now in the construction. Never will I hesitate before saying that among the forces which one needs to Intuition the forces of this etheric body are, sacrificed to the construction. Behind life the connections are often completely different than anybody only suspects it. This etheric body has become protecting powers of the construction. Something great is in such a connection.

Consider now, what a big sum of strength goes up to the spiritual world in the unused etheric bodies of those who go now through the gate of death as a result of the military events.

The matters are connected differently than the human beings can imagine. The world karma takes place differently. Spiritual science must be there just to replace fantastic ideas with spiritually true ideas. We can imagine hardly—to mention only one example—something more fantastic or untrue from the spiritual point of view than something that took place in the last decades. A special “peace society”⁴ was founded to put the law at the place of the war, as one said, “the International Law.”—In no time of humankind such dreadful wars were waged as since the “peace society” exists. In the last decades, this peace movement had a monarch among its particular protectors who waged the bloodiest and cruelest wars which ever were waged in world history. So that the installation of the peace movement from the part of the czar must really appear as the biggest comedy which was played in world history, the biggest comedy and at the same time the most hideous comedy. One has to call that luciferic seduction. This can well be investigated in details. One can say, it stupefies the soul if one sees—one may look at the matters as one wants—in the beginning when these war impulses entered Europe, Central Europe, where one assembled like in the Berlin Reichstag, people talking almost about nothing. One has only spoken a little, but the matters have spoken. A lot has been spoken in the West like in the East. But one has the most stupefying impression in a certain way of that what has been spoken in the St. Petersburg Duma by the different parties. In the various way the representatives of the Duma have really brought forward nothing else than the empty phrases with the biggest fire of enthusiasm. It was stupefying. This is a luciferic seduction. However, everything shows us that the fire, which burns during this war, is a warning fire, and that the human beings have to pay attention.

Everything that happens now points to the fact that at least some souls must say to themselves: it cannot go on that way as it has gone in the world, spirituality must flow into the human development. Materialism has found its karma in this most dreadful war of all the wars. In certain respect this war is the karma of materialism. The more the human souls see this, the more they will get beyond arguing, whether this one or that one is responsible for the war, and say to themselves: this war was sent to us in world history that it is an admonisher that we should turn to a spiritual understanding of the whole human life.

Materialism makes not only the souls of the human beings materialistically minded; it also corrupts the logic and makes the feeling dull. Within Central Europe, one still has to see something that is connected with that which I have said: that one has to deal most intimately with the further development of the Christ Impulse just in Central Europe. But that belongs to it that one has to start understanding the spirits who have already laid the germs. Only one example: Goethe wrote a theory of colours. The physicists look at it as something, about which they say compassionately smiling: what has the poet understood of the colours? He was just a dilettante.—Since the eighties of the nineteenth century I try to help the Goethean theory of colours on the road to success against modern physics. This cannot be understood. Why can it not be understood? Because the materialistic principle, which came from the British folk-soul, penetrated Central Europe. Newton whom Goethe had to combat won the victory over that which issued from Goethe's spirit. Goethe also founded a theory of evolution in which is shown by grasping spiritual laws how the beings advance from the most imperfect condition to the most perfect. This was too hard to understand. When Darwin brought his theory of evolution, the people accepted it, because they could understand it easier. Darwin was victorious over Goethe. The materialistic thinker who was inspired by the British folk-soul was victorious over Goethe who got everything from the most intimate dialog with the German folk-soul.

Ernst Haeckel has experienced something tragic. He lived mentally through his whole life on that which Huxley and Darwin have given to him. The materialism of Ernst Haeckel is basically a very English product. When the war broke out, Haeckel was outraged about what happened from the British islands. He was one of the first to send back the English medals, certificates and honourings. What must be sent back, however, are not the certificates, medals and honourings, but the English coloured Darwinism and the English coloured physics. One has to call that in mind, so that one sees what can be striven for in the Central European area as an intimate being together with the laws of the world.

One can corrupt the childish soul mostly if one already pours out in it that which develops then in only materialistic colouring. The centuries have worked towards it. Among the Britons over there, Ahriman inspired a great author, so that this author wrote a work which was completely intended to influence the soul materialistically from the childish age on in such a way that one does not notice it, because one does not consider it preparing materialism. This is Robinson Crusoe. The whole way, as Robinson is described, is so clever that these ideas of Robinson Crusoe if they are taken up prepare the mind in such a way that it can later think only materialistically. Humankind is not yet cured of inventors of such Robinsons; they always existed and exist even today. I could give many examples.

I talk about these matters not to say anything against the peoples of the West who have to be as they are, but to show how in Central Europe the human beings have to find the connection with the big, only germ-like values of the future development. The role of Austria is also significant in particular. In the last decades, one could see some spirits striving for high ideals like Hamerling⁵ in poetry, like Carneri⁶ who wanted to deepen Darwinism concerning moral, and like Bruckner⁷ and other artists in all kinds of fields. It matters such a self-reflection of the people

Now we look at the unused etheric bodies which exist there. These etheric bodies were taken off by human beings who learnt during a big event to sacrifice themselves for something that there is no longer for them, not as anything sensory at least: for the people. If somebody talks today as a spiritual scientist about the fact that there a folk-soul is as an archangel et cetera, then they laugh at him. What one calls folk-soul in materialism is only the summary of the qualities which the human beings of a people have. What the materialist calls people is only the sum of the human beings who live together and look similar in an area. We speak about a people in such a way that we know: the folk-soul exists as a real being of the archangel's rank. Even if anybody who sacrifices himself who goes through death for his people has no clear idea of a real folk-soul on the field of the events, nevertheless, he confirms by the way he goes through death that he believes in a further effectiveness after this death that he believes that there is more than that which the eyes see in the people: its connection and its keeping together with the supersensible realm.

Everybody who goes through death, whether he knows it more or less, goes through this death, confirming that there is a supersensible world; this is stamped to his etheric body. So that in future except those who will live on the physical earth when peace has taken place again, the unused etheric bodies will live for ever sending these tones to the music of the spheres: there is more in the world than that which can be seen only with physical eyes. Spiritual truth sounds into the music of the spheres by that which the dead leave behind in their etheric bodies, apart from that which they take with their individualities which they carry through the life between death and new birth.

However, one has to listen to that which will live and sound from these etheric bodies. For these etheric bodies were taken off by human beings who, confirming the truth of the spiritual world, went through death. The biggest sin of humankind will be if it does not listen to that which the dead call to it by their warning etheric bodies. How much is the view to the spiritual world enlivened if one has to imagine that the fathers and mothers, the sisters and brothers, sons and daughters, who lose dear relatives and friends, must say to themselves: what was there sacrificed, lives for the whole humankind, admonishing that which has to come.

If one relied on the events of the physical world, one could not have a lot of hope for the prosperous progress of the spiritual movement which should be cultivated in our spiritual-scientific world view. When recently a good, loyal co-worker died, in the thirtieth year of his life, there was in my words, which I directed to this soul after he has gone through the gate of death, the entreaty that he would like to co-operate as faithfully and courageously on our spiritual-scientific field as he co-operated here faithfully and devotedly, using everything that he knew. He co-operated diligently here on the physical plane, this co-worker. I gave him this as a message for his life between death and new birth that he may co-operate after death as he done it before death, because we count on these dead, the so-called dead, as on the living.

Our spiritual-scientific world view must be vivid, so that the abyss is overcome between the so-called dead and the living that we feel the dead among us like living human beings. We want not only theory, but life. That is why we also point to the fact that a living bond exists between those who live on earth when peace is again, and those who went through the gate of death. The human beings will be able to learn from the dead, will have to learn how these dead help in the big spiritual progress which must seize the earth.

Sometimes one recognises in life that the human logic does not suffice. I would like to give you an example, not for personal reasons, but to characterise the way people position themselves to our movement. Some years ago, one could read an article about our spiritual science in a South German very serious magazine written by a famous philosopher of the present. Spiritual science was treated there in such a way that it could make a certain impression on the people because the article was written by a great philosopher. The editor of the magazine prided himself in particular that he could publish an article on spiritual science by such a famous man. Of course, everything was shown badly and erroneously; a totally askew picture of spiritual science was given. What did the editor need, however, to see what a judgment about our movement he had delivered, actually, in his monthly magazine?

Then the war came. That man who had written the article wrote some letters to the editor. These letters contain the most repellent things one can generally say about the Central European culture. He ranted and sneered terribly about this Central European culture. The editor printed these letters as an example of how brainlessly one can think about this culture. Now he says: this person writes, nevertheless, as only a person can write who should be in the lunatic asylum.—The fact is that such a thing was necessary for a good editor to see that the man should be in the lunatic asylum who wrote this article about spiritual science some years ago and wreaked much havoc outwardly. If the man had to be in the lunatic asylum, he should already be there at that time. But at that time he wrote an article about spiritual science.

Such matters happen in the world. Quite different supports have to come to get a judgment than those the human being has today. However, the spiritual scientist stands firmly on the ground that shows clearly that truth finds its way. But spiritual science must have an effect on the development of humankind, so that the necessary matters take place. Like in that time, when the emperor Constantine had to complete his task, the Christ Impulse had to work from the spiritual world on the subconscious, like with the Maid of Orleans the Christ Impulse had to work, so that happened what had to happen, the Christ Impulse has to go on working, only now more in the consciousness. There must be souls in future who know: up there in the spiritual world are those who sacrificed themselves with their individualities and request us to follow them and believe in the effectiveness of spirituality they got through death. But also the forces of the unused etheric bodies call into the future what one only needs to understand to take up it in our own souls. On earth, however, must be the souls who hear this. Souls must be there who prepare themselves by the right and living understanding of our spiritual science. Our spiritual science has to create souls here on earth that are able to have premonitions of what the etheric bodies of the dead up there speak in future. The souls who know: there up are the forces which can admonish the human beings who had to be left to their own resources on earth. If here below souls aware of spirit direct their senses to the hidden tones of the spiritual world, the right fruits will originate from all the blood that flowed, from all the sacrifices that were accomplished, from all the grief that had to be endured and must still be endured. Looking at the hope which may be expressed that a lot of souls may be found by spiritual science who can hear these voices which sound from the spiritual world in particular as a result of this war, I would like to speak, to sum up, the last words of this consideration, words which should express only as a feeling what I would like to stimulate in your souls:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit-land.

With such emotions in the heart we always want to penetrate ourselves with the sense of the rose cross, so that this rose cross is considered rightly by us as the slogan of our working and weaving and feeling. Not the black cross only. Somebody who tears the roses from the black cross would only have the black cross, would be enslaved by Ahriman. The black cross is the life striving for the bare matter. And anybody who tears the cross from the roses and prefers only to have the roses does not find the right. Since the roses, separated from the cross, would raise us to life, but this life would strive egoistically for spirituality and not reveal something spiritual in the material. Not only the cross, not only the roses, but the roses on the cross, the cross bearing the roses, both in harmonious interaction: this is our right symbol.

• 1. Carl Linné in his Philosophia Botanica, Stockholm 1751
• 2. agreement by the French president Faure and Czar Nicholas II in 1897
• 3. Houston Stewart Chamberlain: New War Essays, Munich, 1915
• 4. peace conferences in the Hague from 1899 to 1907, convened on the initiative of Czar Nicholas II
• 5. Robert Hamerling (1830–1889), cf. The Riddle of the Human Being and Autobiography, Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works volumes 20 and 28
• 6. Bartholomäus von Carneri (1821–1909), cf. Methodical Foundations of Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works volume 30.2.29
• 7. Anton Bruckner (1824–1896), Austrian composer

This lecture is also known as The Creation of a Michael Festival and Cosmic Word and Individual Man. It is the 5th of 7 lectures in a lecture series that is entitled, The Human Soul in its Connection with Godly-Spiritual Individualities.

My dear Friends, what I should like to bring to you now will have to be said—as has everything that I have had to say recently about Anthroposophy—with a certain undertone called forth by the painful event which befell our work and our Society on last New Year's Eve: the Goetheanum in Dornach, for the time being, is no more; it was consumed by flames in the night before the New Year. And all who witnessed the destruction in this one night of the work of ten long years, accomplished by so many of our friends, and performed by them with complete devotion—all who have loved this Goetheanum very much, just because of this work, and because of what the Goetheanum was to us, will of necessity be weighed down by the thought that we no longer have this particular outer sign of Anthroposophical activity. For, even if some other building for our work shall arise on the same site—which should by all means occur—owing to the trying circumstances of the present time it can, of course, never be the old Goetheanum. Therefore, behind all that I have had to say since those days there actually stands in the background the fearful glow of the flames, which in such a heart-rending way interrupted the development of all our work. Since this outer sign has vanished, we must dedicate ourselves all the more to laying hold of the inner forces and inner realities of the Anthroposophical Movement and of what is connected with it for the entire evolution of humanity. Let me begin then with a sort of consideration of the nature of the human being. I have presented very much of this kind here in your midst, and I should like now to consider again one phase from a certain point of view.

I should like to start with a consideration of the human being entering the world, of the human being who has descended from the pre-earthly existence and is, as it were, taking his first steps here in the life on earth. We know, of course, that at the time of this entrance into the earth-life, a condition governs the soul which has a certain similarity to the ever-recurring condition of man's sleep-life. As the ordinary consciousness has no remembrance, upon awaking, of that which the soul-spiritual part of man has experienced between going to sleep and waking up (with the exception of the varicolored multiplicity of dreams, which actually float away, as we know, when we sink into sleep or when we wake, and which for the ordinary consciousness do not result from deep sleep)—as, then, the ordinary consciousness has no remembrance of this condition, so for the entire earth life this same consciousness remembers only back to a certain point of time in childhood. With one person this point of time is somewhat earlier, with another later. What occurs in the earthly life prior to this is really as much concealed from the ordinary consciousness as are the events of the sleep state. Of course, it is true that the child is not actually sleeping; it lives in a sort of dreamy, indefinite inner activity; but from the point of view of the whole later life, this condition is at least not very much removed from dream-filled sleep.

There are three activities, however, which set in at this time, three things. which the child is learning. There is what we ordinarily sum up in the expression learning to walk, then what is connected with learning to speak, and what for the child is connected with learning to think. Now, in the expression “learning to walk”, for the sake of our own convenience we actually characterize something which is extraordinarily complex in an exceedingly brief way. We need only to recall how the child is at first utterly unadapted to life, how it gradually gains the ability to accommodate its own position of balance to the space in which it is to move during the entire life. It is not merely “learning to walk” which we observe in the child, but a seeking for the state of equilibrium in the earthly life. Connected with learning to walk is all use of the limbs. And for anyone who is able to observe such a matter in the right way, the most remarkable and most important of life's riddles actually find expression in this activity of learning to walk; a whole universe comes to expression in the manner in which the child progresses from creeping to the upright position, to the placing of the little feet, but also in addition to holding the head upright and to the use of arms and legs. And then anyone who has a more intimate insight into how one child steps more on the heel, and another is more inclined to step on the toes, will perhaps have an inkling of what I shall now have to tell you with regard to the three activities mentioned and their relation to the spiritual world. Only, I should like first to characterize these three activities as to their outer aspects.

On the basis of this effort to attain equilibrium—or, if I may express myself now somewhat more learnedly, perhaps also somewhat more pompously, this search for a dynamic of life—on the basis of this effort, learning to speak is then developed. For, anyone who is able to observe knows quite well that the normal development of the child proceeds in such a way that learning to speak is developed on the basis of learning to walk and to grasp. With regard to learning to talk it will be noticed at the very first how the firm or gentle tread of the child is expressed in the act of talking, in the accenting of the syllables, in the force of the speech. And it will be noticed further how the modulation of the words, how the forming of the words, has a certain parallel with the way the child learns to bend the fingers or to keep them straight, whether it is skillful or unskillful. But anyone who can then observe the entire inner nature of the human organization will be able to know—what even the present-day teaching of evolution concedes—that “right-handed” people not only have the speech-center in the left third convolution of the forehead, in the so-called Broca convolution, which represents in a quite simple physiological way the characteristic relation between speech and the ability to grasp, the entire ability to handle the arm and the hand, if I may make use of the pleonasm; but we know also how closely the movement of the vocal cords, the whole adjustment of the speech organism, takes on exactly the same character which the movements of walking and grasping assume. But in the normal development of the child, speech which, as you know, is developed in imitation of the environment, cannot develop at all unless the foundation is first laid in the quest of the state of equilibrium in life.

With regard to thinking: Even the more delicate organs of the brain, upon which thinking depends, are developed in turn from the speech organization. No one should suppose that in the normal development of the child thinking could be evolved before speech. Anyone who is able to observe the process will find that with the child speech is not at first an expression of “thinking”—not at all! It would be ridiculous to believe that. But, with the child, speech is an expression of feeling, of sensation, of the soul-life. Hence you will see that at first it is interjections, everything connected with feelings, which the child expresses by means of speech. And when the child says “Mama” or “Papa”, it expresses feelings toward Mama or Papa, not any sort of concept or thought. Thinking is first developed from speech. It is true that among human beings many a thing is disarranged, so that someone says, “This child learned to speak before it walked.” But that is not the normal development, and in the rearing of a child one should by all means see to it that the normal course of development is actually observed: walking—speaking—thinking.

However, the real character of these activities of the child is truly perceived only when we observe the other side of human life: that is to say, if we observe how in later life these activities are related to each other in sleep; for they arise out of sleep, as I have indicated, or at least out of the dreamlike sleep of the child. But what do these activities signify during the later earth life?

In general, it is not possible for the scientific life of the present day to enter into these things. It actually knows only the exterior of the human being; it knows nothing of the inner relationships of the human being with the Cosmic Being, in so far as the Cosmic Being is spiritual. In every realm human civilization, if I may use the expression—or let us say human culture—has been developed to a certain materialism, or naturalism. Do not think that I wish here to upbraid materialism: if materialism had not come into human civilization, human beings would not have become free. Materialism is therefore a necessary epoch in the evolution of humanity. But today we must be very clear as to the way we have to go now—as well as in the future. And we must be clear about this in every realm. In order that what I now have to say may be better illustrated, I should like to make it clear to you by means of an example.

You all know and can learn from my books that earth humanity, before it passed through those cultural epochs which are only partly similar to the present one—the ancient Indian, the ancient Persian, the Egypto-Chaldean, the Greco-Latin, and then our own—passed through the so-called Atlantean catastrophe. And during this Atlantean catastrophe the humanity which is now the European, Asiatic, and American civilized humanity lived chiefly on a continent where there is now sea—namely, the Atlantic Ocean. At that time this area was occupied mostly by land, and for a very long time, humanity had been developing upon this Atlantean continent. You can read in my books and cycles what humanity passed through during those epochs. I will not speak of other human experiences during the ancient Atlantean time, but only of musical experiences.

The entire musical experience of the ancient Atlantean would necessarily appear very curious, even grotesque, to a man of the present time, if he could hear it—which, of course, he cannot do. For what the ancient Atlanteans were in quest of in music was, for example, the chords of the seventh.

These chords of the seventh had the peculiarity of affecting the souls of these ancient people—in whose bodies we were all ensheathed, for in repeated earth lives we passed through that time also—in such a way that they were immediately transported out of their bodies when they lived in their music, this music which took into special consideration the chords of the seventh.

They knew no other frame of mind in music than a state of rapture, of enthusiasm, a state in which they were permeated by the God; and, when their extraordinarily simple instruments sounded—instruments intended only for accompaniment to singing—then such an Atlantean immediately felt himself to be actually weaving and living in the outer spiritual world.

Then came the Atlantean catastrophe. Among all post-Atlanteans there was next developed a preference for a sequence of fifths. You probably know that for a long time thereafter fifths played a most comprehensive role in musical development; for example, in ancient Greece, fifths played a quite extensive role. And this preference for a sequence of fifths had the peculiarity of affecting people in such a way that, when they experienced music, they now no longer felt drawn out of their bodies, to be sure, but they felt themselves to be soul and spirit within their bodies. During the musical experience they completely forgot physical experience; they felt that they were inside their skin, so to speak, but their skin was entirely filled with soul and spirit. That was the effect of the music, and very few people will believe that almost up to the tenth and eleventh Christian century the natural music was as I have described it. For not until then did the aptitude for thirds appear, the aptitude for the major and the minor third, and everything of the nature of major and minor. That came relatively late. But with this late development there was evolved at the same time the inner experience of music. Man now remained within himself in musical experience. Just as the rest of the culture at this time tended downward from the spiritual to the material, so in the musical sphere the tendency was downward, from the experience of the spiritual into which he passed in ancient times when he experienced music at all, to the experience of music within himself—no longer as far outward as to the skin, but entirely within himself. In this way there first appeared also at that time the major and minor moods, which are actually possible only when music is inwardly experienced.

Thus, it can be seen how in every domain man has descended from the spiritual into the material, but also into himself. Therefore, we should not always merely say, in a narrow-minded fashion, that the material is something of minor value, and we must escape from it. The human being would not have become truly human at all, if he had not descended and laid hold upon the material life. Precisely because he apprehended the spiritual in the material, did the human being become a self-conscious, independent Ego-Being. And today, with the help of Anthroposophical spiritual science, we must again find the way back into the spiritual world—in all realms we must find the way. This is the reason it is so painful that the artistic endeavor, made by means of the Goetheanum at Dornach, has been obliterated as is now the case. The way into the spiritual world must be sought in every realm.

Let us next consider one activity which the child learns—namely, speech—with regard to the entire evolution of the human being. It must really be said that what the child learns there is something magnificent. Jean Paul, the German poet, has said that in the first three years of life—that is, the years in which the essential things we learn are to walk, to speak and to think—the human being learns much more than in the three academic years. Meanwhile the “three” academic years have become many, but a man still learns no more in those three years than he learns as a child in the first three years of life.—Let us now consider speech. In speaking there is first the outer physical-physiological factor: that is, the larynx and the rest of our speech organs are set in motion. They move the air, which becomes the medium of tone. Here we have, in a way, the physical-physiological part. But in what we say there is soul also. And the soul permeates and gleams through all that we utter in the sounds. In as far as speech is something physical, man's physical body and his etheric body have a share in it. As a matter f course, these are silent from the time of going to sleep until the time of wakening. That is, the normal human being does not speak between going to sleep and waking; but in as much as the soul and the ego have a share in speech, they—the astral body and ego—take with them the soul power of speech, when they pass out of the physical and etheric bodies at the time of going to sleep—and they actually take with them everything of a soul nature which the person has put into his speech during the whole day. We are really different beings each evening, for we have been busy talking all day long—one more, another less, many all too much, many also too little—but, no matter, we have been occupied with talking throughout the day, and we have put our souls into what we have said. And what we have put into our speech, that we take with us into sleep, and it remains our being between sleeping and waking.

Now it may be that in our present materialistic age the human being no longer has any notion that idealism or spirituality may be expressed in the speech. People today usually have the idea that speech is intended to express only the external, the tangibly-objective. The feeling that ideals may be expressed in the speech has almost entirely disappeared. For this reason, it is also true that people today generally find so “unintelligible” what is said to them about “spirit”. For what do people say to themselves when spirit is mentioned? They admit that “words” are being used, but of these words people know only that they indicate what can be grasped or seen. The idea that words may also signify something else, something supersensible, invisible, people no longer like at all. That may be one way in which people regard speech; but the other may, of course, be that people shall find the way again to idealism even in words, even in language, knowing that a soul-spiritual experience may sound through each word, as it were.

What a person who lives entirely in the materialism of the language, so to speak, carries over in sleep into the spiritual world brings him, strangely enough, into a difficult relation with the world of the Archangels, the Archangeloi, into which he should enter each night between going to sleep and waking; while the one who preserves for himself the idealism of speech, and who knows how the genius of the language lives in it, comes into the necessary relation to the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi, especially to that Archangel to whom he himself belongs in the world between sleeping and waking. Indeed, this is expressed even in outer world phenomena. Why do people today seek so frantically for an outer relation to the national languages? Why did this frightful misfortune come upon Europe, which Woodrow Wilson has considered good fortune?—but he was a curious illusionist.—Why then did this great misfortune come upon Europe, that freedom is bound up with the convulsive desire to make use of the national languages, even of the smallest nations? Because in reality the people are frantically seeking externally a relationship which they no longer have in spirit: for in going to sleep they no longer have the natural relation to the language—and also, therefore, not to the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi! And humanity will have to find the way back again to the permeation of all that pertains to language with idealism, if they do not wish to lose the way into the spiritual world.

How does humanity today regard what takes place for the individual human being between going to sleep and waking? People do not take account of this sleep condition at all. If we recollect our past life, we seem to have before us a complete life picture. That is not the case; the time spent in sleep has regularly dropped out; the whole picture is continuously interrupted. We always connect the morning with the previous evening, but between them is the night. And what has occurred during sleep in the night constitutes outwardly, in the first place, at least a third of the human life (at all events, among “respectable” people it is so); and, secondly, it is much more important for the inner man than the outer activity during the whole day. To be sure, the outer activity is more important for external civilization; but our inner development during life is brought about by our coming into relation with the spiritual world in the right way while we sleep during the night.

And the same is true regarding what forms the basis of the other activities; that is to say, if the human being in his actions—that is, what he does throughout the entire realm of the movements which he first learns upon entrance into the earth life—if he puts idealism into the whole realm of his actions, that is, if his life contains idealism in its realization, then the human being finds again the right relation with the Hierarchy of the Archai. And if the thoughts contain idealism, if they are not materialistic, the human being finds during sleep the relation with the Hierarchy of the Angels. This is what we discover if, with the help of Anthroposophical spiritual science, we inquire into the relation to the sleep state of these three activities acquired during childhood.

But this relation may be revealed in a much more comprehensive degree, if we observe the entire life of the human being in the cosmos. You are acquainted with the description in my book Theosophy. When the human being passes through the gate of death, he first experiences for some days the condition which consists in the dissipation of the thoughts, of the concepts. We may express it by saying that the etheric body expands into the distances of the cosmos, the human being “loses” his etheric body. But that is the same as if I say that man's concepts and thoughts are dissipated. But what does that actually mean: that the concepts and thoughts are dissipated? It really means very much. It means, namely, that our entire waking life departs from us. Our entire waking life departs from us in the course of two or three days, and nothing at all would be left of our life, if we did not then live through that of which we remain unconscious during the earth life; that is, if we did not then begin to live through in full consciousness what we have experienced during our sleep life. This sleep life is spiritually infinitely richer, more intense, than the waking life. Whether the sleep be short or long, the sleep-life is each time a reversed repetition of the day life, but with a spiritual impulse: What you have accomplished as actions during the day brings you at night into a relation to the Archai, to the Primal Powers; what you have said in the daytime brings you at night into a relation to the Archangeloi, the Archangels; and your thinking brings you in the same way into a relation to your Angel-being, to the Angeloi.

And what man experiences during sleep is independent of time. It is unnecessary to say: “Very well, but the following is possible: At night I go to sleep; something makes a noise; something awakens me; in this case I certainly cannot complete my going back over the day in retrospect.” Even so it is completed, because the time relations are entirely different; that can be experienced in a moment which otherwise might continue for hours if the sleep were undisturbed. During sleep the time relations are quite different from those of the day. Therefore, it can be stated positively, and must so be stated, that each time a person sleeps he once again experiences in retrospect what he has lived through here in the physical world since the last waking, but this time in spiritual manner and substance. And when the waking life of concepts is dissipated into the cosmos, a few days after death, then the human being lives through the very experiences which he had during the third of life spent in sleep. I have, therefore, always had to describe how man requires a third of his earth-life in order then to live through what he has experienced during the nights of his life. Naturally, it is essentially like the day life, but it is experienced in a different way. And at that time, as the second condition after death, he lives through this retrogression, when he actually experiences once again, in a third of the time, the entire life back to birth. Then when he has again arrived at his birth, he enters into that condition which I have already described to you here in another connection; that is, he enters into that condition in which every conception of the world is essentially altered for him.

You see, here on earth we are in a definite place; the world is around us. We know ourselves very little, indeed, with the ordinary consciousness. The world we observe with the outer senses; that we know. Perhaps, you will say that the anatomists know the inner part of the human being very well. Not at all; they know only the outer aspect of the inner being. The real inner part is something entirely different.—If you call to mind today something which you experienced ten years ago, then you have in the memory something which is in your soul, do you not? It is condensed, a brief remembrance of, perhaps, a very, very extended experience. But it is merely a soul picture of something which you have passed through in the earth life. But now enter into yourself—not now into your memories, but into your physical organism, that is, the apparently physical organism—and observe the wonderful construction of your brain, of your lungs, and so forth. Within you there, rolled up as it were, are—not the experiences of this earth life, but rolled together there is the whole cosmos, the entire universe. Man is really a small universe, a microcosmos. In his organs the whole universe is rolled together. But the human being does not know this with the ordinary consciousness. When he is on earth, he has the memory of his experiences. He does not know that he himself in his physical nature is, as it were, the embodied memory of the whole cosmos.—When, therefore, the backward journey through the life, which I have just indicated, has been completed, then, between death and a new birth, we enter into a cosmic life, where we are not, as now, surrounded by the world with its mountains, clouds, stars, seas, and so on, but where our environment consists of the riddles of the inner human being, where everything concerning the mysteries of the inner human being of which we are deprived in the earth life, now constitutes our environment. Here on the earth, as you know, we live within our skin, and we know about the stars, clouds, mountains, rocks, animals, and plants. Between death and a new birth we know about the human being. All the mysteries of the human being are our environment. And do not suppose that it is a less interesting environment than that of the earth! To be sure, the starry heavens are magnificent, the mountains and the seas are grand; but what the inner being of man contains in a single small vessel is grander and mightier than our earth environment, when between death and a new birth we are surrounded by it in its majestic greatness. The human being is the world between death and a new birth, and he must be the world, because we prepare the next earth life. Together with the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies, we must help to prepare the future earth man. As we here are occupied with our outer culture and civilization, as here on earth we make boots or coats, use the telephone, do people's hair, give lectures, do something artistic, or whatever belongs to our present civilization, so, between death and a new birth, together with the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies, we prepare what the human being is, and what we ourselves shall again be in the physical body in the next earth life.

That is the goal of spiritual culture, and it is grander, infinitely grander and more magnificent than the goal of earthly civilization. Not without reason have the ancients called the physical human body a “Temple of the Gods”, because together with the Gods, with the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies, this human physical body is formed between death and a new birth. That is what we do, that is where we are with our ego—among the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies, working on humanity, together with the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies. We move about, as it were, among the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies; we are spirits among spirits.

What we do there we can, of course, do only according to what we have accomplished here in the earth life; and that also is revealed to us in a certain sense in the relation of sleep to waking. Just think how chaotic the dream is! I do not undervalue the wonderfully varied multiplicity and the grandeur of the dream; but we must nevertheless recognize that the dream, compared with the earth life, in whose images it is clothed, is chaotic. You need only to recall that dream which I have mentioned before as an illustration (Volkelt told this dream, according to a report from Württemberg, but we know of such, do we not?). A city lady visited her sister, who was the wife of a country parson, and she dreamed that she went with her sister to church to hear a sermon; but everything was quite peculiar; for, after the Gospel was read and the pastor went up to the pulpit, he did not begin to preach, but instead of raising his arms, he lifted wings, and finally began to .crow like a cock! Or recall another dream in which a lady said she had just dreamed of considering what good thing she should cook for her husband, and nothing at all occurred to her until finally the thought came to her that she still had an old pickled grandmother upstairs in the attic, but she would be very tough yet.—You see a dream can be as chaotic as that—strangely chaotic. But just what does it mean that the dream acts so chaotically? What does it really mean?

While we sleep, we are, with our ego and astral body, outside of our physical and etheric bodies. And during that time we experience again in reverse order—especially with regard to the moral significance—all that we have done, have said and have thought during the day. We live through that in reverse order. We are preparing for ourselves our karma for the next earth life, and this appears in pictures already in the time between going to sleep and waking. But these pictures are still very bungling; for when, upon waking, we are again about to enter into the physical body, the picture does not yet fit in properly: that is, we are not able to conceive things in conformity with the macrocosm; instead we conceive something entirely different, perhaps a “pickled grandmother”. That is because, with regard to what we have already formed in our sleep, we do not understand the adaptation to the human physical body. This adaptation to the human physical body is exceedingly difficult; and we acquire it in that working together, which I have described, with the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies between death and a new birth. There the soul-spiritual self must first readjust what otherwise in the dream so often enters so awkwardly, when the sleep consciousness is again fully overcome, and the person without his own cooperation has plunged again into his old physical body. This soul-spiritual self, between death and a new birth, must penetrate all the mysteries of the physical body, in order that the body may be built up in the right way. For the body is really not formed by the parents and grandparents alone. To believe that is one of the perfect follies of science. (We are justified in making such a statement!) For how does science approximately set forth this human development? Well, it says that as the basis of material substance we have molecules, which are built up in a complicated way from atoms. The albumen molecule, which is contained in the embryo-cell, is the most complicated of all, and because it is so complicated (naturally no scientist can describe it, but he points to its exceeding complexity) because it is so complicated, a human being can originate from it. That is the simplest sort of explanation of the human being! It is simply asserted that the entire human being is already contained in the molecule; it is merely a very complicated molecule.—The truth is, however, that the albumen molecule must completely revert to chaos, must become dust of disorganized matter, if a human being is to originate from it. We have in the outer world organized matter in crystals, in plants, and so on: if anything is to originate, even a plant, or an animal, then the matter must first completely return to dust. And only when it no longer has a definite form does the entire cosmos work upon the tiny bit of stuff, making in it an image of itself. How is it, then, with the human being? Between death and a new birth, we form this human image, with all its mysteries, into which we weave our karma, and we send this image down before us into the body of the mother. So we have first formed the spirit germ—only, this is very large in comparison with the physical germ—and this descends into the matter which has become chaotic. That is the truth—not what the present-day physiology dreams.

In this time of which I have been speaking, the Ego lives as a soul-spiritual being among soul-spiritual Divine Beings, actively occupied with learning to know completely the inner human being as such for the next earth life. Of that which is then spiritually experienced in tremendous majesty and grandeur, an image marvelously appears in the child in the individual actions in attaining equilibrium. It is very interesting to see how the Primal Powers, or Archai, work over from the life between death and a new birth into the whole effort of the child to attain balance or, as we trivially say, to learn to walk. Anyone who can see in everything earthly an image of the spiritual can see in all the practice in walking, in the use of the hands, and so on, an image of those soul-spiritual deeds which we performed between death and a new birth in seeking spiritual equilibrium as an ego among higher egos.

And, when we have completed those conditions in which we are a spirit among spirits, in which we prepare what is to be manifested in our earth life in the body, in the members, through which we again become a human being of such and such a nature, and experience our karma—when we have passed through these conditions yonder in the world between death and a new birth, then a condition appears in the pre-earthly life in which we can no longer distinguish the individual spiritual Beings with whom we have worked for so long, but in which there is only a general perception of the spirit. We know then, to be sure, that we live in a spiritual world; but, because we are now already approaching the earth life, the impression which the spiritual world makes upon us becomes one of greater uniformity, and is no longer a perception of the particular, individual spiritual Beings.

I can express myself by means of a trivial comparison, in order that we may be able to understand one another, but please be very clear about this, namely, that in doing so I refer, nevertheless, to something very exalted. If a little cloud appears somewhere in the distance, you say that it is a little cloud; but when you approach it, you become aware that it is a swarm of gnats. Then you are distinguishing the separate individuals. Well, in the spiritual world between death and a new birth, it is reversed: there you distinguish at first the single individualities of the spiritual Beings; then the impression becomes a general one. What I mean is that the manifestation of the spiritual replaces experience of the spiritual.

Indeed, this condition, which separates us, as it were, from the spiritual world, because we are already seeking the way down to earth again—this condition is reflected now in the inner something within us which forms the basis of human speech. Suppose we speak. It begins with the larynx (that is not exact, but approximate), and the other organs of speech are set in motion. But behind this there lies that which is essential. What is essential lies in the heart, behind the larynx; it lies in the breathing process and everything connected with it. Just as learning to walk, seeking equilibrium, is an earthly image of our movements in the spiritual world, so that which underlies speech is likewise an earthly image of the condition of manifestation in which we perceive the divine-spiritual Beings only as a blurred mass. So the child experiences again when it learns to walk a condition which it has gone through between death and a new birth.

And when we have sent down the spiritual germ of our physical body, when through conception it has gradually become united with the body of the mother, then we are still above. At the end of the time before earthly embodiment, we draw together our etheric body out of all the regions of the universe. And that action, which takes place in the supersensible world in attracting the etheric body, finds expression in the child's learning to think.

Now you have the three successive conditions: experience in the spiritual world in learning to walk; manifestation of the spiritual world in learning to speak. (For this reason, that which as Cosmic Word underlies speech we call the Cosmic Logos, the inner Word. It is the manifestation of the universal Logos, in which the spiritual expresses itself, as do the gnats in the swarm of gnats; it underlies speech.) And then what we do in the forming of our etheric body, which actually thinks in us—we think the whole night through, only we are not present with our ego and astral body—that is the last part which we gather together for ourselves before we descend to earth, and that activity is what extends over into the thinking. Thus, in learning to walk, to speak, and to think, the baby organizes into the physical body what it brings down from the pre-earthly existence.

This is what leads to real spiritual knowledge and also at the same time to the artistic and the religious comprehension of the world; namely, that we are able to relate each single occurrence in the physical sense existence to the spiritual world. Those people who would always like to speak of the divine-spiritual only “in general” I have often likened to a man who should go out into a meadow, and to whom should be pointed out daisies, dandelions, wild chicory, whereupon he would say: “All that does not interest me; they are all just flowers!” That is easy, to say they are all just flowers. But something in the flower-being is differentiated there. And so it is also in the spiritual world. Naturally, it is easy to say that something spiritual underlies everything of a sense-physical nature. But the point is that we should know more and more what spiritual something lies at the foundation of the various sense-physical phenomena; for only in this way can we from the spirit actually lay hold again upon the sense-physical course of life.

By means of this principle, for example, our Waldorf School pedagogy becomes a unique pedagogy, which actually considers the human being. This will appear even more clearly when once this pedagogy shall be developed for the child's first years. As there it would be adapted to learning to walk, to speak, and to think, and the further evolution of these faculties, so we now naturally adapt the method to the years following the sixth and seventh, in such a way that we consider questions such as these: What embodies itself in the child at this moment? What comes to expression in the child's life, with each week, with each month, of that which existed before birth? Thus the pedagogy is really developed from the spirit.

That is one of the impulses of which we must rediscover many, if humanity does not wish to remain in the downward course, but intends to begin to ascend. We must find the way again into the spiritual world; but we shall be able to do this only when we learn quite consciously to find ways and means to act and to speak from the spirit.

In the time immediately following the Atlantean catastrophe, human beings lived from the spirit—that is, each individual—because each could be told on the basis of the point of time at which he was born, what his karma was. At that time astrology did not signify that dilettantism which it often represents today, but it signified livingly experiencing the deeds of the stars with them. And as a result of this living experience, it was revealed from the Mystery Temple to each individual human being how he had to live. Astrology had a vital significance for the individual human experience. Then came the time, about the 6th, 5th and 4th pre-Christian centuries, in which people no longer experienced the mysteries of the starry heavens, but in which they experienced the course of the year. What do I mean by it when I say that human beings experienced the “course of the year”? It means that they knew from direct perception that the earth is not the coarse clod which present day geology contemplates. Upon such an earth as geology represents, plants could never grow, to say nothing of the appearance of animals and human beings. There could be none of these, because the earth of the geologists is a rock; and something will grow directly on a rock only if the entire cosmos works upon it, only if it is united with the whole universe. What man must learn again today was known even in ancient times, namely, that the earth is an organism and has a soul.

It is true that this earth-soul also has its special destiny. Suppose it is winter here with us, Christmas time, the time of the winter solstice—that is the time when the earth soul is fully united with the earth. For, when the cover of snow is over the earth, when, as it were, a mantle of cold surrounds the earth, then the earth-soul is united with the earth, rests within it. It is also true then that the earth-soul, resting within the earth, sustains the life of a multitude of elemental spirits. When today a naturalistic view believes that the seeds which I plant in the earth in the autumn merely lie there until the following spring, that is not true; the seeds must be protected throughout the winter by the elemental spirits of the earth. This is all connected with the fact that during the winter time the earth-soul is united with the earth-body.

Now let us take the opposite season, that is, midsummer, St. John's season. Exactly as the human being inhales the air and exhales it, so that at one time it is within him and at another time outside of him, so the earth breathes in her soul—that is during the winter; and at the height of summer, St. John's season, the earth-soul is entirely breathed out, sent out into the far reaches of the cosmos. At that time the earth-body is, as it were, “empty” of the earth-soul. The earth in her soul lives with the events of the cosmos, the course of the stars, and so on. Therefore, in ancient times there were the winter-mysteries, in which man experienced the union of the earth-soul with the earth; and then there were the summer-mysteries, in which man was able to perceive the mysteries of the universe, from the experience which the earth-soul shared with the stars, for it was granted to the human souls of initiates to follow the earth-soul out into the cosmic spaces.

That people had a consciousness of these things you can learn even from the fragments of ancient tradition which are still extant.—It is now a long while ago, but I often sat—right here in Berlin—with an astronomer, who was very famous here, and who started a fearful agitation about the Easter Festival, saying that it was very disturbing when the Easter Festival, let us say for example, did not fall each year at least on the first Sunday in April, and it was awful that it should be on the first Sunday after the spring full moon. Naturally, it helped not at all to give reasons against his argument, for the fact which lay at the root of the matter was the fear that a dreadful confusion was caused in the debit and credit columns of the ledger, if Easter falls at a different time each year! This movement had already assumed rather large dimensions. (I once mentioned the fact here that on the first page of the ledger there usually stand the words, “With God”, but generally what is in these books is not exactly “with God”.) In those times when the Easter Festival was established according to the course of stars—when the first Sunday after the spring full moon was dedicated to the sun,—in those times a consciousness still existed that in the winter season the earth-soul is in the earth; that at St. John's season the earth-soul is wholly outside in cosmic spaces, and in the spring it is on the way to cosmic spaces. Therefore, the spring festival, the Easter Festival, cannot be established only with reference to the earth, on a definite day, but must be regulated according to the constellations of the stars. There is a deep wisdom in this, which comes from the times when, as a result of the ancient instinctive clairvoyance, human beings were still able to perceive the spiritual reality in the course of the year. We must attain to this again, and we can attain to it again in a certain sense if we lay hold upon the tasks of the present in connection with just such explanations as we have carried on together here.

I have already often said here that, of the spiritual Beings with whom man is united each night, in the way I have told you—for instance, through speech with the Archangels—certain Beings are the ruling spiritual powers throughout a certain period of time. In the last third of the 19th century the Michael-time began, that time in which the Spirit who in the records is usually designated Michael, became the determinative Spirit in the affairs of human civilization. These things are repeated in cycles. In ancient times men knew something of all these spiritual processes. The ancient Hebrew age spoke of Jahve, but it spoke always of the “countenance of Jahve”, and by the countenance was meant the Archangels who actually mediated between Jahve and the earth. And when the Jews expected the Messiah on earth, they knew that it was the time of Michael; that Michael was the agent of Christ's activity on earth. They misunderstood, however, the deeper significance of that fact. Now, since the '70's of the 19th century, the time has come again for the earth when the Michael Power is the ruling spiritual power in the world, and the time has come when we must understand how to bring spirituality into our actions, to arrange our life from the spirit. That means to “serve Michael”—not to order our life merely from the material point of view, but to be conscious that he who has the overcoming of the low Ahrimanic Powers as his mission—that is, Michael—must become our Genius, so to speak, for the evolution of civilization. How can he become that?

Well, he can become our guiding spirit if we call to mind how we can again make connections with the course of the year in the spiritual sense. There is actually great wisdom in the entire cosmic course in the fact that we may unite with the spring festival the festival of the resurrection of Christ Jesus. The historical connection—I have often explained it—is a completely right one: The only possibility is for the spring festival—that is, the Easter Festival—to occur on a different day each year, precisely because it is viewed from the other world. Only we upon the earth have the narrow-minded conception that “time” runs along evenly, that one hour is always as long as another. We determine time by means of our earthly expedient, mathematics; whereas, for the actual spiritual world, the cosmic hour is something living. There one cosmic hour is not equal to another but is longer or shorter. Therefore, it is always possible to err if we establish from the earthly point of view something which should be fixed according to the heavens. The Easter Festival has been established rightly in accordance with the heavens.

What kind of a festival is it? It is that festival which is intended to remind us, and which once reminded humanity with the greatest vividness, that a God descended to earth, took up his abode in the man, Jesus of Nazareth, in order that, at the time when human beings were approaching the development of the ego, they would be able in a suitable manner to find the way back through death into the spiritual life. I have often explained this here. The Easter Festival is, therefore, that festival in which man sees in the Mystery of Golgotha death and immortality following it. We look upon this spring festival in the right sense when we say to ourselves: Christ has affirmed the immortality of man in that He Himself has conquered death; but we human beings only rightly understand the immortality of Christ Jesus if we appropriate this understanding during the earth life; that is, if in our souls we vitalize our relation to the Mystery of Golgotha, and if we are able to free ourselves from that materialistic concept which would dissociate from the Mystery of Golgotha all spiritual significance. Today people no longer wish to acknowledge “Christ” at all, but merely “the humble man of Nazareth, Jesus.” A man would feel embarrassed, as it were, in the presence of his own scientific instincts, if he were to grant that the Mystery of Golgotha involves a spiritual mystery in the middle of earth existence—namely, the death and resurrection of the God.

When we experience that fact spiritually, we prepare ourselves to have spiritual experience of other things also. This is the reason it is so important for the human being of the present time to attain the possibility of experiencing, at the outset, the Mystery of Golgotha as something purely spiritual. Then he will experience other spiritual facts, and he will find the approach, the way, to the spiritual worlds through the Mystery of Golgotha. But then, beginning with the Mystery of Golgotha, the human being must understand the Resurrection while he still lives; and, if he feelingly understands the Resurrection while he lives, he will thereby be enabled to pass through death in the right way. In other words, Death and Resurrection in the Mystery of Golgotha should teach the human being to reverse the condition; that is, during life to experience Resurrection within the soul, in order that, after this inner soul resurrection, he may pass through death in the right way. That experience is the opposite of the Easter experience. At the Easter season we should be able to immerse ourselves in the Death and Resurrection of the Christ. As human beings, however, we need also to be able to immerse ourselves in what is for us resurrection of the soul, in order that the resurrected soul of man may pass rightly through death. As we in the spring acquire the true Easter mood when we see how the plants then germinate and sprout, how nature is resurrected, how nature overcomes the death of winter, so we shall be able, when we have experienced summer in the right way, to acquire a feeling of certainty that the soul has then ascended into cosmic spaces. We are then approaching the autumn, September is coming, the autumnal equinox; the leaves which in the spring became budding and green, now become brownish, yellowish, and drop off; the trees stand there already partly denuded, nature is dying. But we understand this slowly dying nature if we look deeply into the process of decay, into the approach of the snowy covering of the earth and say to ourselves: There the earth-soul is returning again to the earth, and it will be entirely within the earth when the winter solstice shall have come.

It is possible to feel this autumn-time with the same intensity as the spring-time. And if we feel in spring, at Easter-time, the Death and Resurrection of the God, then we shall be able to feel in the autumn the resurrection and death of the human soul; that is, the experience of resurrection during the earth-life in order to pass through death in the right way. Then, however, we must understand also what it signifies for us, for our present time, that the earth-soul is breathed out into the cosmic spaces during St. John's season, in the summer, is there united with the stars, and comes back again. He who has insight into the mystery of this succession of the seasons in the course of the year knows that the Michael-force, which in former centuries did not come down to earth, now comes down through the nature forces! So that we are able to meet the autumn with its falling leaves, when we perceive the Michael-force coming down from the clouds to the earth. Indeed, the name “Michael” is to be found in the calendars on this date, and Michaelmas is a festival day among the peasants; but we shall feel the present time spiritually, in such a way that earthly human events are for us closely connected with the events of nature, only when we again become capable of understanding the year's progression to such an extent that we shall be able to establish in the course of the year the annual festivals, as people of old established them from their ancient dream-like clairvoyance. The ancients understood the year, and on the basis of the mysteries which I have been able only to indicate today, they established Christmas, Easter and the St. John's Festival. At Christmas people give one another gifts, and do some other things also; but I have often explained, when I have given Christmas and Easter lectures here, how little remains with humanity today of these ancient institutions, how everything has become traditional and external. If we shall come to understand again the festivals, which today we merely celebrate but do not understand, then, from the spiritual knowledge of the course of the year, we shall also have the power to establish a festival which will have true significance only for the humanity of the present time: that will be the Michael Festival at the end of September, when autumn approaches, the leaves become withered, the trees become bare, nature moves toward decay—just as it moves toward the sprouting of the Easter season. We shall have the power to establish such a festival, if in decaying nature we perceive how then the earth-soul unites itself with the earth, and how the earth-soul brings Michael with it from the clouds! If we have the force to create from the spirit such a festival as shall again bring into our social life a community of interest, then we shall have done it from the spirit; for then we shall have originated something among us of which the spirit is the source. It would be more important than all the rest of social reflection and the like—which, in the present confused conditions, can only lead to something if the spirit is in them—if, to begin with, a number of intelligent persons were to unite in order to establish again upon earth something from the cosmos: that is, to originate something like a Festival of Michael, which would be worthy of the Easter Festival, but as an autumn festival would be the counterpart of the Easter Festival! If people were able to decide upon something the motive for which lies only in the spiritual world, but which in such a festival would again bring among men a feeling of common interest, something which would be created in the immediate present, out of the full, joyous human heart, that would result in something which would socially unite people again.

For in ancient times the festivals made strong bonds between human beings. Just consider what, has been done, and what has been said and thought on behalf of the festivals and at the festivals for the whole civilization!

That is what has been gradually interwoven into the physical world through the fixing of festivals directly out of the spirit. If people of today could decide in a worthy manner to establish a Michael Festival at the end of September, it would be a deed of the greatest significance. For this purpose, people would have to have courage, not merely to dispute about outer social organizations and the like, but to do something which will unite the earth with the heavens, which will again connect physical conditions with spiritual conditions. Then, because by this means the spirit would again be brought into earthly affairs, something would actually happen among men which would be a mighty impulse for the extension of our civilization and of our whole life. There is naturally no time to set forth in detail all that this would mean for scientific, religious and artistic experience, but such a new festival, created from the spirit, in grand style, would affect these realms just as did the ancient festivals. And how much more important would be such a creation from the spiritual world, than all that is developed today in social tirades. For what would be the significance of such a creation? Oh, it signifies much for the deep observation of the human soul, if I see what a man intends, or if I understand his words rightly. If we today are able to learn from observation how the whole cosmic course operates when autumn approaches, if we can unriddle, can decipher, the entire physiognomy of the universe, and out of our knowledge can act creatively, then we shall disclose not only the willing of human beings in the creation of such a festival, but we shall disclose the willing of Spiritual Beings, of Gods!

My dear friends! I have the following to say to you, in continuation of our conversation yesterday morning. The point is that you feel in the right way the sending out by the spiritual powers present in the spiritual world and connected with Christ's life on earth, and that you feel your own connection with these spiritual powers as your mission. And in this sense I have read to you the words from the Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter 5, verses 9 and 10, in the way they present themselves when we try to penetrate their real meaning in our language:

After Christ brought his bodily life to an end, he is the healer of sins through all earthly times for all who are filled with him, and is referred to with the word of the spirit as the highest savior of souls according to the rite of Melchi-Sadek.

Only when you feel your own calling in the spirit of these words, with which at the beginning of the Christian era those who were to fulfill the mission of Christ to the full were sent out, will you be able to see in them a renewal of Christian work. Now, however, it is important that we are able to let this word - which is an old word, but has been renewed in the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews - have the right effect on our souls. This word, which designates the actual mission of the Christian priesthood, points out to us that only those in the early days of Christian development, that is, in the first centuries of Christianity, sensed their priestly mission in the right way, who said: We do not want to understand alone, in the sense of the Levitical rite, that which we have to bring into the world as a cult, but we want to see through the look through the Levitical rite to that rite which stands nearer to the divine world order and according to which the priest-king Sadek, Adonai Melchi-Sadek, performed the sacrificial service before the priest-king of the ancient Jews, and that is a sacrificial service which Abraham, the old priest-king of the Jews, to whom the Levitical priestly service is to be traced back, also recognized as the higher one for that time. This indicates to us that the sacrificial service of the Jews, insofar as it is traced back to the sacrifice of Abraham, must be understood as a lower one in the early days of Christianity compared to that which was then accomplished in its archetypal old way by Melchi-Sadek, and which in a higher sense, closer to the spiritual world, was again accomplished, is being accomplished and is to be further accomplished by the Christ Jesus Himself. It is pointed out that what Christ's sacrifice is - which is to be renewed on the altar in the way it can happen -, is a higher act than the act that was offered in the days before Abraham - not to the God Jehovah - by Melchi-Sadek, and we must now understand what is actually in these words.

It is said that Melchi-Sadek offered his sacrifice through bread and wine, which were considered inferior to the offerings made by Abraham – the underlying concept here is quite clear. However, we must also bear in mind that the expression “bread and wine” is one that came from later, exoteric Judaism and no longer shows the original full understanding. Because this original and complete understanding was no longer present in those who had a hand in formulating the text of the Old Testament, but only in those initiates who still had an understanding of the ancient initiation in the early centuries of Christianity, it can no longer be fully determined from the text of the Old Testament what is actually meant by the sacrifice of Melchizedek. And yet, those who are sent out into the world as priests today must also have a correct understanding of these offerings of Melchi-Sadek.

If one goes back to what is really meant, in the sense of the initiatory knowledge, when it is said that the sacrifice of Melchi-Sadek was offered in the form of bread and wine, one comes to see that in the bread, in the right initiatory knowledge, has always been seen as a carrier of salt. The Jews actually no longer acted in the right sense and with the right understanding when they forgot the salt and even emphasized that it was necessary to use unleavened bread for the sacred sacrificial act. In the bread that was originally meant, salt was seen, just as in the wine it was not the wine as such that was seen, as it presents itself in its wine substance, but it was sought in the wine the extraordinarily volatile, fluctuating content of sulfur or phosphorus, which in the old term is one and the same. If we speak in the right sense, we must actually say that the sacrifice of Melchi-Sadek - that is, the sacrifice that was performed according to his rite - was offered through salt and sulfur - or through salt and phosphorus - as found in the foodstuffs bread and wine. That is the original conception, and initiation is called “initiation” because it always goes back to the original conception. In the ancient Hebrew priesthood, the real bread, which contains salt, was replaced by unleavened bread for a certain reason that was not human, because certain secrets were no longer known.

What is it, then, that is contained in salt and phosphorus when a person absorbs them through bread and wine? In salt and phosphorus, through salt, lies the connection between man and the earth. The more salt a person absorbs, the more he connects with the earth, and the more phosphorus he absorbs, the more he breaks away from it and frees himself from it. What takes place in the human body – not outside of the human body – through the combination of salt and phosphorus is a process that properly connects the person to earthly existence, because the salt connects him to the earth in the right way, while the phosphorus snatches him away from earthly existence in the right way, making him free from it again. It is so that the man who has salt and phosphorus in the right way in him stands on the earth in the right way, is properly connected to the earth, but also receives the necessary ethereal and astral lightness to be free again from the earth forces in his being. The fact that the Jews of later times laid the main emphasis on the unleavened in bread showed that they no longer wanted to be connected with the earth, but wanted to have in the bread itself that which would carry them above the earth. Thus they wanted a supermundane and not an earthly priesthood; they wanted a priesthood that would rule the earth from the outside. This was the case with Judaism in particular at the time of Christ. Because Judaism, through long periods of time, had established a priesthood in its mysteries that was not properly connected with the earth, it could not understand that the Being of whom its initiates spoke as the coming Messiah could come to perfection in an earthly body; and it never dawned on the initiated Jews either that the Christ could have walked on earth in an earthly body, in the body of Jesus. Only Paul realized this when he received the help that the Christ revealed Himself not in the earthly body but in the etheric body.

Thus are all things connected, and this you must feel, for the words from the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, which were given to those who were sent out as priests in the first Christian centuries, these words can only be understood in the right way from these foundations. But what is gained by going back to the actual original form of the offering of “salt and brimstone”? We can imagine what is gained by doing so if we imagine the contrast that existed between the high priest, between Melchi-Sadek, who was also a priest-king, an Adonai, and Abraham. In the current of intellectual life in which Melchi-Sadek also stood, the idea of repeated earthly lives was alive. It lived precisely in the mystery community to which Melchi-Sadek belonged in such a way that it was kept hidden from the uninitiated as a mystery, but it was handed over to all those who had been initiated into these mysteries. The Abrahamitic Hebraism was characterized by the fact that it restricted human perception to what arises as something spiritual for man when one disregards repeated earth lives, when one does not go into them, when one still takes scantily into account the pre-earthly life that preceded one's earth life and then considers the post-earthly life.

At least that was the teaching of the Pharisees. Abraham was the forefather of Judaism, who had the mission, within the education of mankind on earth, not to allow the teaching of repeated earthly lives to be active at first, in contrast to the higher priest, whom he recognized and who applied this teaching to those who were consecrated by him when they offered a sacrifice. He was opposed to the view of Melchi-Sadek, as described in the Old Testament. We must visualize this view of Melchi-Sadek in the following way.

It was the case that those who became disciples of Melchi-Sadek, which Abraham did not fully become, came to recognize that a person who, here on earth, in addition to doing good and right, also does wrong, needs a power that passes from his present body to the body of the next earthly life. Man cannot by himself carry over into the body, that is to say into the physical and etheric organization of the next earth-life, that which he accomplishes as activity in one earth-life; he can carry it over - and that now in sense of the time of human evolution before the Mystery of Golgotha, in that what is accomplished through the cult with salt and phosphorus is done for him, in the sense that Melchi-Sadek accomplished the sacrifice through bread and wine. This enabled people in the time before the Mystery of Golgotha to take with them into the bodies they took on in the next life on earth the consequences of the good and evil they had committed in the previous life on earth. In other words, it was only through this that people were able to develop karma. None of the moral actions of one earthly life would have been passed on to a future life if it had not been for this kind of passing from body to body of what must be borne, so that there is karma, the cosmic destiny of man.

And what would have happened if there had been no such sacrifices of salt and phosphorus, if there had been no priest-kings to perform these sacrifices and thus become human beings who, so to speak, carried the other bodies along with them through their own momentum and enthusiasm, thus carrying the power of karma from one earthly life to another? Then the good and evil that people have done in one earthly life would have fallen away from them in that particular earthly life and become an inheritance of that power which, in the sense of the Gospel, is referred to as the “prince of this world”, not as the prince to whom man, with his innermost being, belongs. Before the Mystery of Golgotha, the constant struggle of the time was that the so-called prince of this world - a spirit that had become Luciferic-Ahrimanic, namely a spirit that had become strongly Ahrimanic - took possession of that which tends towards evil in man, so that he could use the power of this evil for himself in the cosmic order. Human beings would then have become increasingly free from this evil. They were not allowed to do so; they were not allowed to do so because otherwise a new existence of their own would have begun in each new life on earth, and they would never have been able to atone for what is called 'sin' themselves. The sacrifice of Melchi-Sadek therefore consists in the fact that the healing of sins was preserved for men by continually snatching them from the prince of this world, and thus giving men the possibility of effecting a sin-atoning through their own nature in a subsequent life on earth. The Catholic Church was careful later on not seriously to consider this secret, which it has known for many centuries, even as late as the Middle Ages, and which is still known today by individual initiates of the Catholic Church, as religious content, for the reason that it is easier to tell people that their sins are forgiven, that is, that they are wiped out of the earth, even with the help of indulgences, to blot them out, instead of telling them that one is working to ensure that they are not blotted out on earth and do not become prey to the prince of this world and thereby corrupt the world for eternity instead of telling them that the healing of sins consists precisely in the fact that man is given the opportunity to make up for sins in the following earthly life.

In the sacrifice of Melchi-Sadek, therefore, in the right sense for that time, the remedy for sins is given, and the healing consisted in giving men the strength to keep their sins and not to deliver them up to the prince of this world. All that lies in the meaning of these words, you, my dear friends, will find renewed and exalted in what the Christ accomplished on earth. And only this illumination, which is now being given, will lead you on the path to recognize in the right sense what the word means: Christ took upon Himself the sins of men, united with them. Christ did not come to unite human piety with Himself, but He was the One who united Himself with the sins of men in order to take upon Himself the burden of sin. And when Paul says, “Not I, but Christ in me,” he means: You humans should accept the Christ in you, and thus accept the current in you that goes into the future of the earth, which contains your stream of sins, but the stream of sins that does not lead to death, but to the atonement of sins. And as priests you will become real healers of sins, not repulsors of sins, whereby men would perish in the light of their existence on earth. Again, this mystery is not explained in the church because it does not want to say what speaks to the courage, but what speaks to the cowardice of men. And it speaks to the cowardice of men when one says: Your sins will be taken from you. But one must speak to the courage and strength of men when one tells them: Your sins will be kept from you, you can carry them into the following earthly lives and can create the compensation for them so that you do not spoil earthly development, and in this way you can carry what you have worked for into future earthly cycles. But this is what you must feel with dignity again if you want to understand your priestly office in the right way. For then you will unite in your mission the three things that the Christ wants to see united in the mission of those who follow him and acknowledge him as the true Master, who in a higher sense has renewed the sacrifice of Melchi-Sadek, who acknowledge him in such a way that they continue his work among men in the threefold sense:

Firstly: in the name of the Father, by feeling truly imbued with God and the spirit, by feeling themselves to be priests not merely by profession, by virtue of their office, but by feeling themselves to be priests through the spirit. Those who do not perform their priestly duties with enthusiasm but merely as a job – which is always the heritage of the prince of this world – do not perform them in the sense of Christ.

"The second is that the word of the gospel is not externalized in the sense of the prince of this world, but proclaimed in the sense of the living Christ, so that the proclamation of the gospel is based on spiritual understanding in the heart of the priest. The continuing churches have sinned very grievously against the second, that which Christ demanded of his servants; they have sinned very grievously by bringing about conditions that are still visible today in their extremes. Especially those who want to be priests or teachers of the gospel very often most often criticize when anyone wants to base the gospel on the living spirit again. And then, in a seductive way that actually contains a Luciferic impulse, it is said that the Gospel should not be interpreted in a “complicated” way – but it is not a matter of a complicated interpretation, but of an interpretation in keeping with the spirit – it should be interpreted in simple words, as they stand. But that means nothing other than that it should not be interpreted at all. Because the way it is proclaimed today is not the gospel; that is, the way it is proclaimed today is actually denied by many theologians. The second thing you should feel as priests of a renewed priesthood is that you should carry out your ministry with enthusiasm, that you have the will to fulfill Scripture in a spiritual sense.

The third thing is that you want to be and should be in the right sense soul doctors of people, soul healers, by your word actually being fulfilled by that power that is given with the commission you have received, by that power through which you, when you perform the cult in the right sense and teach from inner enthusiasm, from inner knowledge, interpreting the scriptures , then in your work you have the power to heal souls, that is, to truly continue the work that the Christ accomplished with the Mystery of Golgotha and that is indicated by the words that he who struggles for the inheritance of evil in human nature, so that this human nature may not bring sin from one from one life to another, has been bound by the Mystery of Golgotha in the earthly life for a thousand years, that is, for a period at the end of which people should have become so strong that they can no longer fall prey to him; then he will be released again, and then people will have to have greater strength to resist him.

We live in the time, my dear friends, in which, on the one hand, Christ wants to show Himself to people again to strengthen their power; in this time we must prepare ourselves for this in the appropriate way. But we also live in the time when the thousand years are fulfilled, when the adversary wants to break his fetters and will do his utmost to achieve his intentions. And that is the time when the real secret of human evolution will be revealed to people, that those who truly feel the “Christ in me” take their sins with them by having the intention not to repel sins and thereby deliver them to the adversary, but to take them within themselves and, through what happened at Golgotha, to have a healing effect on humanity.

My dear friends, I believe you expected to learn not an unctuous reworking of what has already been taught, but something that really contains the secrets of initiation; and you will see that much of what has been taught so far is the very opposite of what is real. And if you cannot feel very keenly that you have to bring something new into the world, which in many respects is the very opposite of what is not a teaching from God but a teaching from the prince of this world, then you will not be able to enter into what you want in the right way. It is therefore an important matter. And the words that I have to add, so to speak, as the “first sermon” at the first mass that has been held here, must not only be words spoken in theory, but they must contain something that can shake your souls in a certain way and bring them to a new state of mind. Because the time has come when people must again be told: Change your minds! And those who want to lead people in a new priestly sense must also speak in such a way that it is said: Change the mind by which, in misunderstanding the facts, the Christian mind has been veiled to man so far!

In this way, after the preceding ceremonies, it falls to me to address the word of sending to you, the word of sending that was spoken in the sense of the first Christian sending of those who had been called to the apostolate, this word of sending forth, which is recorded in the second letter of St. Paul to Timothy, chapter 1, verse 6. And this word I have to speak to you at this moment in the manner in which we can express it in our present language:

I exhort you always to stir up the gift of the Holy Spirit that is in you, which was given to you by the touch of the power of the Spirit world.

And I have to add the word from the first epistle of Timothy, chapter 4, verse 14, which in turn is translated into the language that is expressed by our present words with liveliness, so it means:

Do not lose the excited spiritual power from the eyes of your soul, which is given to you through the spirit word that touches the power of the spiritual world and works in the future.

Those who were sent out in the first Christian centuries to become the apostles were sent out in the spirit of the words of truth contained in these letters to Timothy, and became true followers of the apostles. And if you want to carry out what you have set out to do in the right way, you must become successors of the apostles. You can only do that if you say to yourselves: The apostles will speak to us in the mind of Christ; but we must bring the right understanding to the language of the apostles! And in order for you to have the right understanding of the language of the Apostles, I followed the solemn ceremony of the ordination of the shepherds of souls by connecting, so to speak, the first sermon for the Apostle ministry, which can lead you in the right sense to an understanding of your Apostle ministry. But only if you know that it is precisely in the alchemy of salt and phosphorus – or sulphur – that is, in the bread and wine, that you renew what happened on the cross and as a result of the death on the cross, then you will know that you have to consider the third as part of your mission. The three components of your mission are as follows:

First, that you should discharge your office in the enthusiasm with which the divine spiritual world permeates us;

secondly, that you should bring strength to the communities in the living word, not in the dead word, which actually denies the real spirit and which today, out of a Luciferian inclination, is called the “simple” word; and

thirdly, that you feel like real healers, like real doctors for the sins of humanity, that is, that you can accomplish, in addition to your own state of soul, in addition to the interpretation of the word the miracle of the remission of sins, that is, the transformation of the inheritance of the prince of this world into a good that the Christ carries into the souls of men through all subsequent eras and circles of the earth for the atonement of sins. As one imbued with God, as a teacher of God and as a healer of sins – in this sense you must give to your communities and tell them what you yourselves experience in your enthusiasm, what you can learn as a teacher of God within you, and that it may become manifest to them what you have attained as the living power of the healing of sins. That is what I had to place upon your souls today.

A participant: What about the breaking off of a piece of the host? Does that have something to do with the human constitutional elements?

Rudolf Steiner: If we see in the whole host what lives as solar power in man, we first take in nine-tenths, which we initially let work through their salt content. In this way, we connect nine-tenths of what is in us with our earthly existence, in the way I have just described. The question is: what happens to the remaining tenth? We immerse it in the wine, and before it enters our organism, we mix it with the phosphorus of the wine. It is in this mixing of the phosphorus with the salt that the part of the action taken out of the human being lies. The other part of the action takes place when we allow the salt to combine with the phosphorus merely through inner alchemy. The fact that we also take a small part out of this inner alchemy and leave it to the power that lives on the altar, that is what lies in the breaking away of the tenth from the host.

If we consider the whole human being, in the sense in which I have presented it in my “Theosophy”, according to its nine parts, we find, if we go down from above: spirit man, spirit of life, spirit self, consciousness soul, mind soul, sentient soul, sentient body, etheric body, physical body. These are the nine members. They would not connect with earthly life in the right way if there were not a synthesis: this is the tenth (see the larger circle drawn around the nine smaller circles in the diagram on Plate 3). This gives us ten members, which also appear in the ten Sephirot of the pre-Christian era, albeit in the way that corresponds to that time, when full self-awareness did not yet exist. If you now think of the host in connection with the ten members of the human being, you have in it a member that is the physical body, the ninth (in the drawing, the small red circle), which is actually the tenth. This physical body is in a special position, it is in a different position from the other links in human nature. You have to bear in mind that if you look out into the vastness of space from the earth, in the parts bordering on the earth, in a very, very fine resolution, you have everything that is on the earth, except for the salt-like. The salt-like is a property of the earth itself. There was once a period in the evolution of the Earth when salt formations also occurred in the Earth's immediate surroundings, but they no longer developed into solids, remaining instead in a liquid or gaseous state. Then a time came in the evolution of the earth when salt formation only occurred on the earth itself and in its immediate vicinity, so that the ether, which permeates the earth but extends beyond it, has no part in the formation of salt. Salt is something that has only a meaning for earthly existence itself, and this is shown by the fact that for no other celestial body but the Earth has salt formation become the peculiar characteristic of planetary formation. If you take the physical body, then, simply through its organization, it has a share in salt. And at the moment when you break out of the whole human being, which the host represents, the 'physical body', you can say: I cannot have this body connected in any other way with the one in which the other parts are already inside, than by me letting what can no longer take place on earth in the right way, what only takes place in a decadent way – by forming phosphoric acid salts, , but which make up precisely the heaviest part of the human being, his bony part, which belongs solely and exclusively to earthly existence. By allowing this to combine in an extra-terrestrial way – that is, allowing the salt to combine with the phosphorus that is in the wine – I allow, through what I do in the rite, through Christ, that which would not be effected in my own body. So I must consume a part of the host in such a way that it does not work like the other part of the host; so that [by breaking off a part of the host] it should be shown that man himself is not the alchemist who effects the transmutation, but it should be shown how that which man cannot do is done by the power of Christ at the altar.

This is how the matter presents itself when we consider it in terms of the new spiritual alchemy.

A participant: What about the seven candles on the altar?

Rudolf Steiner: It is good to put into words everything that is present in the cultus in a physical form, because the physical form of the cultus should speak to us. If we wanted to express in a single sentence what is contained in the seven candles, we would have to say: Just as there are seven human constitutional elements within you, a sevenfold power radiates out of the ritual for you, each part of which belongs to a part of your own being.

A participant: What can be said about the figures on the chasuble?

Rudolf Steiner: If we consider the processes that take place in the cosmos and which either close in on human beings, so that they participate in cosmic processes, or which are expressed in a different way so that they develop images or replicas of them, then, if we want to express this in words, we can only do so in the following way: Panel 3

We can say that ascending and descending forces are at work everywhere in the cosmos. These ascending and descending forces can best be visualized by a line like this:

We would then have the ascending forces on one side and the descending forces on the other.

On the one side we would have the ascending forces and on the other the descending forces. You can imagine it something like this: if you were to stand on one pan of a set of scales, you would be heavy, i.e. you would take part in the general ponderability of the earth, in gravity. You would join the forces that work downwards. There are, of course, other forces at work than those that we initially think of as represented by gravity. You could live in connection with everything that manifests itself as gravity, but you could never develop a soul life permeated by thoughts. For if you were only exposed to these forces of gravity, your brain would weigh 1500 grams; but a brain weighing 1500 grams would immediately crush all the fine veins beneath it. If the brain were to press down on the lower surface of the head with this weight, a person would not be able to think, and would therefore not be able to develop a soul life. How do we develop a soul life? You develop a soul life, to put it bluntly, through Archimedes' principle. Archimedes said that when he was once in the bath, he observed that he felt lighter than outside the water. And in physics we learn the law that every body, when immersed in water, loses as much weight as the weight of the amount of water displaced by it, so that when you are in the water, you lose as much weight as a human formed from water would weigh. Now our brain is floating in the brain fluid and as a result it loses so much of its weight that instead of pressing down with 1500 grams, it only weighs 20 grams. In physics, what counteracts the force of gravity in the fluid, which now works upwards and not downwards, is called buoyancy. Thus man lives with his soul not in the forces of gravity, the ponderable forces, but in those forces that draw upward; he himself is a physical cosmos, which, as regards his soul life, does not live in what is heavy in him, but in what continually strives to escape from gravity in him.

Thus we can say: We need only look at the human being very roughly in physical terms, and we cannot think materially at all. The human being has the characteristic of being heavy. But if we were to think with the material, we would have to think with the heaviness. We cannot think with heaviness, but only with uplift. It is therefore nonsense to believe that we think with heaviness. We think with that which strives upward to heaven; thus we join the forces that work upward. We human beings live in the forces that draw downward and those that work upward; our inner being is in the upward-working forces, our outer being in the downward-drawing ones. The physical body is heavy, the etheric body is neutral in relation to gravity, the astral body pulls up and the I is carried up through the astral body, not down. Thus the outer man is integrated into the cosmos. But what does he do as an organism that also has an inner organic life? The following happens:

Everything that takes place in the head is a true reflection of what is happening in the metabolic-limb organization. When, for example, a person digests and his kidney and liver systems work together to regulate digestion in the right way, a process takes place in the kidney and liver systems that is also reflected in the left part of the brain. There is never just something going on below or just above, but there are always corresponding processes taking place below and above. Thus, just as the human being is outwardly embedded in the cosmos of ascending and descending forces, so too is he inwardly endowed with these forces; those forces that are in the left part of the brain act down in the liver and kidneys; those forces that are in the upper right part of the brain act down in the stomach (see diagram, plate 3).

And if we follow the effects of these forces, the ascending and descending ones, we get this second line:

Plate 3

There is a neutral point in the human being where these two forces intersect. If you show yourself as a spiritual person to the believing community, and you show yourself from the front, you show yourself in this form (see drawing). If you turn around, then that part of you which is more an image of your own inner being shows itself in the other line. With regard to the upper, dotted part, it is then a matter of taking it up through yourself, that is, letting it go within you and leaving it to the gods to properly effect the transformation of the ascending into the descending forces. So that you simply show what is right when you are vested. You pronounce the secrets of the world through the vestment.

So you can't say: why is that so? In the material world, man is simply Maya. During the sacred act, he can show himself as he is in relation to the cosmos and to himself. You make sure that the person shows himself not in an illusory form, but in his truth. The image is intended to suggest what is a reality in the human being in the spiritual sense, but what is also reproduced in the physical human being. You just need to form a picture of how the blood circulation in the human being proceeds in the left and right halves of the heart, how the blood flows from the right atrium to the right ventricle, through the lungs, back to the left atrium , from there to the left ventricle, and again supplies the upper part of the human being, this is visible in an approximate way, corresponding to earthly conditions. Only when one follows this line, the point of intersection is somewhat shifted in the physical and is more towards the bottom.

A participant: Does a donation formula have to be given for the community communion?

Rudolf Steiner: The situation is as follows: the Act of Consecration of Man, the Mass, can be read and the faithful merely listen. The Communion of the faithful can also be incorporated into the Act of Consecration of Man; in that case it takes place after the Priestly Communion. And so it should actually be that all the breads are in the paten, to be used for the Communion of the faithful, and that all the wine is in the chalice, to be used for the Communion of the faithful. So the Priestly Communion is coming to an end.

May Your Body, O Christ, which I have received, and Your Blood, which gives me life, penetrate me, so that the disease of sin may be cured by the healing medicine, the sacrament.

It is done through You, who bear and order the life of the world, as You receive it from the Father and, through the Holy Spirit, make it whole in all the ages to come.

Altar server: Yes, let it be so.

Now the priests' communion is over; now the faithful's communion begins:

The body of Christ which you receive and the blood of Christ which gives you life may permeate you so that the disease of sin may be healed by the healing medicine, the sacrament.

It is done through You, who bear and order the life of the world, as You receive it from the Father and, through the Holy Spirit, make it whole in all the ages to come.

Altar server: Yes, Lord, let it be so.

The host is given, placed on the tongue. The believer is touched lightly with the fingers of the right hand on the left cheek, and it is said again:

Peace be with you.

Then the chalice is passed. The left cheek is again touched with the fingers of the right hand, and again it is said:

Peace be with you.

This is the transition from the priest's communion to the faithful's communion.

Of course, Holy Communion is not to be distributed at every Mass, but in any case it should not happen that the faithful proceed to Communion without an opening of the Mass. Now it may be that in some places the Mass cannot be read. Then it would of course still be good, even without celebrating the Mass, at least to develop the whole spirit of the Mass, so that - since the community will certainly demand the explanation of the Mass right from the start - the Communion of the faithful can at least be incorporated into the Mass action in spirit.

A participant asks whether the Communion of the faithful should also take place without the Priestly Communion.

Rudolf Steiner: The action can certainly be performed in an appropriate manner. It is not good if the communion of the faithful is brought about without the communion of the priests. The communion of the priests should come first.

A participant: What about the mixing of water and wine?

Rudolf Steiner: This is a given in actual alchemy, in that the human being - I only hinted at this yesterday by way of example - continually develops alcohol within himself as he needs it. Now, the human being is also 90% water column, the other is only incorporated in it. Therefore, in the chalice, we also have an image of the human being made of water and wine, in that you do not just take the wine, but the wine, which is a product of the human being, mix it with the water.

You can only unite with Christ by entering into the phantom of the physical human body. This is contained in the words: “entering into the physical earth”; and this is what man finds when he

physical, even when it is already corrupted in the physical, is linked precisely to Christ. Thus renewal takes place in union with Christ, which is there as a consequence of the Mystery of Golgotha.

Friedrich Rittelmeyer asks whether words could also be given for the laying out of the robes in the sacristy.

Rudolf Steiner: Of course one could think of something like that, but I would actually like to warn against the danger of over-Catholicizing. The situation is this: if you take a missal in your hands today – the good missals include instructions for this – you will find an extraordinarily strong externalization. Every second, when the priest dresses or walks to the altar, he is doing something prescribed for him; he cannot escape the words contained in the missal. A Missa solemnis is, after all, something extraordinarily complicated, and only by first tormenting candidates for the priesthood to learn how to put together a mass, for example at Christmas, at Easter and so on, does one make it possible for the matter to proceed without difficulty. Otherwise, the composition of a mass, for example a Christmas mass, where many individual priests work together, would take an extremely long time to prepare, because everything is externalized and has to be coordinated. Now this is simply postponed to the time of the candidates, and later the priests can spare themselves the trouble, because it actually happens automatically. So it is precisely in the Catholic Church that it is the “catholic” that it has externalized everything, and one must go back to feeling one's way through the action of the Mass with such moods, as I have just indicated through the two fundamental sermons, so that one does not have to specify. And you have indeed given the priest the means to keep this alive in his mind, in the breviary, if it is used in the right way and is brought into the right connection with the preparation for and the celebration of the Mass. I would therefore like to warn against the fact that the matter is too formulaic. I must strive to bring back what is Catholic in the Ahrimanic externalized, to the original real spiritual. So I would like to warn against feeling too strong a tendency towards Catholicism. They would quickly end up on the same path that Catholicism actually took in the 5th century, but especially between the 10th and 12th centuries, where everything was really externalized. I believe that we would have to avoid that if we act correctly. So: do not go too far when formulating. Formulate what needs to be formulated, but do not go too far.

What I said yesterday and today, and what I may still have to say, offers the opportunity to experience the original spiritual dimension in a very concrete way, not just in a general, abstract way, but in a very concrete way, during the preparation, the celebration and the aftermath of the Mass. There it comes to life every day. We do not run the risk that the Roman Catholic priest does, namely – and of course one must express things as they are – when you celebrate the great lines of the rite, it is also a real process. What you perform as a rite is imprinted in the ether of the universe; and when you read the tenth mass, it is not the same as the first time. The first time you excite the vibrations in the cosmic ether, the tenth time you already place yourself in the vibrations; thus, more and more an objective arises. If you now permeate everything with formulas too strongly, you get the same result as when a Catholic priest performs the service. The actual rite breaks away from the person, but the rite that clings too strongly to the person causes a terrible hardening in the person: he repeatedly enjoys the same thing that he enjoyed the day before, he enjoys, so to speak, his own sputum over and over again. And that must be avoided. A participant: How should we understand 'to the right and left of the altar' at Mass?

[Rudolf Steiner's answer is only poorly recorded by the stenographer. See note.)

A participant asks about sobriety when celebrating the Act of Consecration of Man.

Rudolf Steiner: You can imagine how much more undisturbed the whole process of celebrating the Mass is when there is no nourishment at work within you. The Catholic Church has the idea that the consumption of the sacrament at Mass is made the first consumption of the day, with the exception of those who have dispensation because otherwise their health would be harmed. Now, the idea is that the mass is basically performed for others, so it is detached from the priest, so that the question of whether the priest should perform the mass on an empty or a full stomach is actually a personal matter for the priest. Of course, it has an effect on him, because he also has to read it for himself. Now he can arrange it in such a way as he needs for his own strengthening. He has to read the Mass every day. But if one priest says, “I feel the power of the Mass for eight days,” another says, “I feel it for a month.” This is true for the priest himself.

The act should be celebrated at sunrise, not at sunset. A mass at sunset cannot be considered a real mass for the cosmos. During the Christmas season, a mass should be read around midnight, at the transition from the descent to the ascent of the sun, between December 24th and 25th. This is how it is now; originally it was between December 22 and 23. This is now also correct in the Catholic Church. A mass is to be read at midnight between December 24 and 25, immediately where the sun begins to rise. A participant: How often should incense be burned during the ceremony?

Rudolf Steiner: Only one incense is necessary. But of course, if you want to celebrate the service solemnly, you can even do it up to three times. You don't have to limit it to a clever system. It is a process that develops. You must not ask: What difference does it make if I do it three times? - The first time invokes the process.

Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond

The importance of Anthroposophy for present and future mankind will only gradually be realised, but insight will come when understanding has been gained of certain things indicated in occult writings though not, as a rule, studied in sufficient depth, Reference could be made to innumerable passages in books on occultism or also in writings on religion in support of what I am referring to here, but I shall mention only this well-known and very significant passage in the New Testament: ‘Unto them that are without, the mysteries are revealed in parables, that seeing they may see and not understand. But unto you’—so says Christ Jesus—‘the mysteries of the kingdoms of heaven shall be revealed in their true form.’¹

The profound significance of such a passage is generally overlooked. What does it really mean? Which are the most important parables in which Christ Jesus speaks to His disciples? They are those which, as a rule, are not considered to be parables at all. What man sees in the kingdoms of Nature around him on the physical plane, he takes to be reality. He looks at an animal or a plant, and pictures to himself that these are realities in the forms in which they appear. But in truth it is not so, for what is actually present as a reality is the spiritual world—that and that alone. And not until we nave recognised the Spiritual in the things around us do we truly know reality.

Everything else that is revealed to us in surrounding nature is tantamount only to a symbol for the spiritual world behind it. Everything to be seen in the kingdoms of mineral, plant, animal, and also in the physical human kingdom, everything that makes an impression upon the sense-organs, upon intellect and intelligence—all these things are nothing but symbols of the Spirit; and only one who learns how to interpret these symbols reaches the reality, the Spirit.

And so as men pass through the world, observing its beings and its happenings, what they perceive are symbols, nothing but symbols. Nature herself addresses man in parables, in symbols. In the Spirit alone there is reality. When the spirit is being spoken of in images taken from Nature, Christ Jesus is explaining processes pertaining to the Spirit. He speaks in a parable of the seed that is sown and undergoes different forms of destiny. (St Mark, IV, 1–9). The process of which He is speaking belongs to the kingdoms of outer Nature—hence it can only be described in the form of a parable. But when Christ Jesus is making clear to His disciples that He is one with the Father of all existence, that he has to live on the earth and suffer death, that within Him is a Christ-power, a Christ-impulse that must pass through death as a force by which courage and consolation can be given to all men through all time to come—then He is speaking of reality, He is speaking of the Spirit.

Knowledge, therefore, can only be genuine when man has succeeded in penetrating behind the mysterious secrets of the world, so that he learns to recognise symbols which indicate spiritual processes. And in truth the soul will be tremendously enriched when man is able to be aware of his relationship with the outside world.

We will consider a particular example.—Going to sleep and waking is an ever-recurring rhythmic experience. Man must experience in rhythmic sequence the flashing up of the normal day-consciousness and its subsequent darkening into the state of sleep. If we now ask, what may be compared in Nature outside with this rhythmic alternation of sleeping and waking in man, many will think of the rhythmic alternation in the growth and withering of plants in the spring and autumn. Man sees the green foliage appearing, the blossoming, the ripening of the fruits, the forming of the seed; then, during the winter, all this seems to be obliterated and to reappear in the spring. It might come naturally to him to compare the processes of his own waking and going to sleep with the budding of the plants in spring and their withering in the autumn. That would, however, be a fallacy, merely an external comparison.

What is it that we actually experience when we go to sleep at night? Our astral body and our Ego emerge from the etheric body and the physical body. If we now look back spiritually upon the physical body and the etheric body we shall perceive that their activity at night and by day is entirely different. During the day, through our normal consciousness, we wear out our physical and etheric bodies through acts of will, through feeling and through thinking; fatigue is evidence that we have worn out our physical and etheric bodies. In fact our daily life is a process of ruining and wearing out our physical and etheric bodies, and they are most thoroughly worn out in the evening. With clairvoyant sight we shall perceive that during sleep the physical body and the etheric body begin to manifest a plantlike activity. The worn-out nervous system and etheric body begin as it were to bud and blossom at the moment of going to sleep and within the human being something takes place that may be compared with what happens in the spring, when everything buds and sprouts. The moment of going to sleep must be compared with the spring and the deeper our sleep the more do our physical and etheric bodies pass over into a condition of budding, sprouting life. It is then spring and summer within us, and as the moment of waking approaches it is autumn; consciousness lights up, clear day-consciousness. The summer-like condition is brought to its close and, during the course of the day, desolation resembling that of Nature during winter, when the Earth's activity has died away, is brought about in our physical and etheric bodies.

Thus going to sleep must be compared with the season of spring and waking with that of autumn. The Earth-spirits in the plants liberate themselves in spring from the physical element of the plant world and the spiritual beings connected with the plants sink into a kind of sleeping condition during the summer and are awake during the winter; where there is winter on the Earth, there these spirits permeate the planetary body. Admittedly, it might be said in connection with the Earth that it is not possible to speak of sleeping and waking, because conditions are different in each hemisphere. But the rhythmic movement is such that when the Earth-spirits depart from the north they go towards the south; they permeate the planet in rhythmic alternation. A certain comparison is possible here with what takes place within the human being. Man so easily forgets that he is a whole man. He supposes that thoughts and consciousness reside only in the head, and when the astral body and the Ego are outside, he believes that there is nothing within him that thinks. In reality the lower half of his body is all the more active, only he knows nothing of it. The essential point is to realise that we can actually speak of the Earth-spirits beginning to sleep in the spring, that they withdraw from the body of the Earth where it is spring and summer ... Similarly, a vegetative life unfolds in the human being while he is asleep. And in the winter, when the Earth-spirits stream in again, the seeds remain hidden and the Earth-spirits wake; they are then united with the Earth. Thus we may say: When we stand on the Earth in summer we have around us physical Nature; everything buds and blossoms and lower elemental spirits are active on the Earth. Divine life, divine consciousness, penetrate into the Earth in wintertime, not in summertime.

True spiritual science helps us to recognise this because it is able to penetrate into these things with clear, clairvoyant consciousness. Man can say, if only he is capable of feeling it: spring—and summer—forces which cause outer Nature to bud and blossom call forth the lower elemental beings out of the Earth, whereas the highest Spirits who are connected with the Earth have withdrawn from it. And in the middle of the summer the lower elemental spirits, driven forth by the power of the Sun, celebrate a kind of ecstasy of their lower forces.

Then comes wintertime; the warmth and light of the Sun decrease, and with the approach of winter the highest divine forces unite with the part of the Earth on which we live. In winter the Earth feels as though enwrapped in the Beings with whom we are connected in the depths of our nature. We may then feel reverence which takes the form of a prayer to these sublime Beings, to the divine Powers who have been allied to man from the primal beginning.

It is the mission of Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy to teach us to know and understand what is living in our environment. And this it will do, with all clarity. We know that men once possessed this knowledge, although in the form of dreamlike, clairvoyant consciousness; what we reacquire to-day was once primordial wisdom revealed to mankind through dreamlike clairvoyance.

Is there external evidence too for what has been said to-day? Yes, there is. In far past ages men knew well that in the summer season the lower elemental spirits rise up and reach a state of ecstasy at midsummer, that the activity of outer physical life is then at its highest point. Hence the middle of the summer was chosen as the right time for festivals that were intended to be intimations of man's physical connection with Nature. With their ancient clairvoyance men knew that the greatest intensity of physical life, the ecstasy of physical life, is reached when the human being surrenders himself at midsummer to the splendour and glory of outer physical Nature. And it was also known that the approach of winter means an awakening of the divine forces, a union of the divine forces with the body of the Earth. For this reason ancient consciousness placed in midwinter the festival that was meant to betoken man's feeling of union with what is intimately related to the most divine forces of his own soul; it was the festival of the divine Being who would one day become the Spirit of the Earth. This festival could not take place in the summer; it was celebrated in December as the Christmas festival, the festival of the Spirit. The festival of physical Nature, the St John's festival, was celebrated in the summer; Christmas, the festival of the highest Spirits, belongs to the season of winter.

When we realise what intimate messages the festivals have for us, we feel united with the whole spiritual evolution of mankind. What men have established in this way reveals the knowledge they have possessed and the fruits of this knowledge. The external physical light of the Sun, the physical forces of the Heavens, come down to the Earth in the spring. This descent of the physical light and this withdrawal of the Spirit to the heavenly world just as the Spirit withdraws from man during the night, is wonderfully expressed in the Easter festival, which is determined every year by the constellations. Just as in the spring the forces of Heaven and Earth work together visibly, so was the Easter festival fixed according to the visible positions of heavenly bodies, according to knowledge of the stars.

The suggested introduction of a fixed Easter because material considerations seem to require this, is absolutely characteristic of our age. It amounts to taking away from the Easter festival the very feature that gives it meaning, and this for the sake of material, industrial and commercial interests. A movable Easter may be inconvenient for balancing accounts and be troublesome for certain business arrangements but the very fact of the date of the Easter festival being determined by the constellation in the heavens is an expression of the feeling man has of the inter-working of the earthly and the heavenly in the spring.

And just as these forces work in man when he goes to sleep, so in the autumn, and when he wakes from sleep, a spiritual element is active; but when he goes to sleep, and in the spring, physical and spiritual, heavenly and earthly, work together. In fixing the year's festivals this had naturally to be given physical expression too. Herein lies profound wisdom. It is probable that the commercial, materialistic interests of our time will gain the day and Easter will become a fixed festival. But it would fare ill with knowledge that humanity ought to preserve if men were to forget the essential meaning of such a festival. For this reason it will be incumbent upon the anthroposophical Movement always to celebrate Easter as a movable festival. An Easter festival determined by materialistic principles would then exist by the side of the Easter festival fixed according to spiritual principles; and we shall celebrate this festival truly when we have learnt to regard the external world itself as a symbol.

The coming of spring is a symbol of an event performed by the Spirit—namely, that of going to sleep. In the autumn, Nature withers away and the Spirit wakes. The withering away is no reality; it is a symbol of the fact that the divine forces allied with the Earth are waking. And with their wisdom the men of ancient times placed in the winter season the festivals which indicate the connection with spiritual worlds. Infinitely deep wisdom is everywhere in evidence here, wisdom through which man becomes aware that he lives in the flow of Time, together with spiritual Beings to whom he belongs. And so man will gradually learn to know that he belongs to the Spirit of which external Nature is merely a symbol; more and more he will long to experience his relation to the Spirit, not to its outer symbol.

We know that the great Atlantean catastrophe was followed by the period of ancient sacred Indian culture; then came the ancient Persian and the Egypto-Chaldean-Babylonian epochs of culture, then the fourth, the Graeco-Latin epoch, and we ourselves are living in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. But attention has also been called to another rhythm. The Graeco-Latin epoch stands, as it were, by itself; the fifth epoch is a kind of repetition of the third, the Egypto-Chaldean-Babylonian epoch; the sixth epoch will be a repetition of the Persian, and the seventh a revival and renewal of the spiritual content of ancient Indian culture. Qualities and features of Egypto-Chaldean civilisation therefore come into evidence again in a certain way in our own thinking, feeling and impulses of will. During that third epoch men were destined to unfold and intensify their connection with the world of the stars. Astrology was elaborated and cultivated in the third epoch. Men had direct clairvoyant insight into the mysterious connections between the world of stars and human destiny.

There have been highly spiritual men who felt this inwardly, as though through a resurgence of incarnations in that third epoch. It was like a recollection of what they had achieved in ages of the distant past, when there was direct, intuitive astrological knowledge. This was the case with Tycho de Brahe, the reincarnated Julian the Apostate. [See also Occult History, lecture IV, and Appendix; also Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies - Volume IV, Vol. IV, lecture V and VII.] Copernicus too, like Kepler, was an astrologer and attached great value to those mysterious connections through which human destiny can become intelligible.

This is naturally regarded as utter superstition by the ‘enlightened’ mentality of to-day and the attitude of a modern man who prides himself upon possessing it will be that Tycho de Brahe was admittedly a great astronomer and in those days it was excusable that he should also have been an astrologer! Enlightened men of the present age see fit to ‘excuse’ a great deal; for example, they excuse Tycho de Brahe for having astonished the whole world at that time by foretelling the death of the Sultan Soliman. They regard this as an understandable weakness of the great man who made the first map of the heavens. Indeed these enlightened minds even find an excuse for the circumstance that the death of the Sultan Soliman actually occurred within a few days of the date foretold by Tycho de Brahe!

So we see how the ancient Egypto-Chaldean wisdom flashed up again in certain individuals. It is present even now, only we must seek it in a new form, and then anthroposophical study of the symbols and parables to be found in the external world will reveal many secrets. We perceive, for example, that in every plant, if a connecting line is drawn between the points around the stalk where the leaves are attached to it, we get a spiral; it is as if the leaves made their way around the stalk in spirals; and in a plant where the stalk is not rigid it follows this law itself, describing spirals as, for instance, is the case in the bindweed. These are everyday phenomena but no attention is paid to them. Some day, however, these things will again be studied and then the striking discovery will be made that these movements of the leaves depend upon forces that are not to be found on the Earth but work down from the planets; and because the planets describe certain spiral movements in the heavens, their forces actually guide the leaves in spirals around the stalk. The stalk grows vertically and the blossom is the culmination. The spiral lines differ in the various species of plants because there are several planets and their effect upon the plants is different in each case.

A time will come when it will be known, for example, how Venus moves, and what species of plant corresponds to this movement. Such a plant will then rightly be regarded as a mirror image in miniature of the movement described by Venus. Other plants mirror the movement described by Mercury in the spiral line connecting the points at which the leaves are attached to the stalk; others mirror the movement described by Jupiter, others again that described by Saturn. The planets impress their scripts upon the plants of the Earth, and the Sun's force regulates the whole process in such a way that the effect produced by the planets culminates in the blossom. Some day men will study the connection of the spiral growth of the plants with the movements of the planets and then they will feel the kinship of the kingdoms of the Earth with the kingdoms of Heaven.

Everything in the external world is a parable, a symbol; the laws of the growth of plants symbolize the movements of the planets, and these in turn are symbols of something even more sublime—deeds of spiritual Beings in the Cosmos. It will eventually be possible to discover how individual physical entities and beings are connected with the Cosmos. A beginning will be made by studying physical matter, and what grows and thrives on the Earth will be connected with the deeds of spiritual Beings in cosmic space. Men will gain knowledge of how minerals, plants and animals and even human destiny, are connected with deeds in the Cosmos. This knowledge will be gained anew during our present epoch but for a long time yet external science will refuse to adapt itself to such ways of approach and those who busy themselves with astrology will continue to cling to old traditions instead of going to the real sources. That is what ought to happen, but it can only do so if men confront the world with an attitude resulting from the stage of occult development appropriate for the modern age—regarding everything in the external world as signs and symbols.

Signs that had meaning for ancient clairvoyant consciousness have been handed down from olden times without being understood. For example, the sign of Aries was full of meaning and living content to the men of old; the sign did not apply to the constellation of Aries as such but indicated that the Sun or the Moon was standing in a certain relationship to this constellation, enabling certain forces to work in a definite way.

What we call ‘space’ at the present time is nothing but fantasy—it too is a ‘symbol.’ There is no space as such; spiritual forces are working from all directions. This is a difficult concept to grasp but the reality of certain facts can be felt instinctively.—On the morning of 21st March the Sun rises approximately in front of the constellation of Pisces, but this is simply the indication that particular spiritual forces—or Beings, to be more exact—are exercising a definite influence upon the Earth at that time. When we feel how this sign—the Sun in the constellation of Pisces—should be interpreted, we can translate it into terms of imaginative knowledge and speak of its inner significance.

An endeavour has been made to indicate these things in the Calendar which has just appeared. In this Calendar will be found signs that differ from those handed down by tradition, because the latter are no longer suitable for modern consciousness. (See note at end of lecture.) These pictures of the Zodiacal constellations are representations of actual experiences connected with the waking and sleeping of particular spiritual Beings. We have in these pictures a renewal of certain knowledge that needs to be renewed at the present time, because the third post-Atlantean culture-epoch must as it were rise again in the fifth epoch.

One must, of course, begin with a correct computation of time, and this brings me to a matter that will be regarded by those outside our Movement as sheer distortion and lunacy. It will be found that the Calendar indicates the year 1879 [i.e., 1879 years after the birth of Ego-consciousness at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. In many other lectures Dr Steiner indicates the year 1879 as the beginning of the Michael Age.]; this is because it is important for people of the present age to regard the year of the Event of Golgotha as the most momentous of all, as the year which determines how time is to be computed. When on a Friday in April in the year 33 A.D. the Mystery of Golgotha took place, Ego-consciousness in the present sense was actually born. It matters not at all on what part of the Earth a man lives, to which nation, race or religion he belongs. Just as the day of Caesar's death is the same for a Chinese or a European, the fact well known in occult life is that the Mystery of Golgotha took place in the year 33 A.D. The birth of Ego-consciousness is a fact of international significance, having nothing whatever to do with nationality.

It is therefore surprising to read in foreign theosophical periodicals that here we are promoting theosophy in a form patterned entirely in accordance with German culture! No credence whatever should be given to this statement for it gainsays the very essence of our Movement. One is little inclined to enter into or discuss these things and would much prefer to ignore them. But it is a duty and a necessity to call attention to them so that friends may be forearmed when sheer misstatements are made. Unfortunately, however, such misstatements are sometimes believed. It is anything but pleasant to have to speak of these things and it is done only because it is a duty to safeguard mankind against fallacy. If it is insisted that equal rights must be accorded to opinions but the interpretation of this is to distort one opinion and connect a particular region of the earth with it, warning is essential. What really matters is that truth must reign among us as a sacred law.

Our desire was to express in the Calendar the objective fact of the birth of the Ego. We reckon from the Mystery of Golgotha, hence from Easter to Easter, not from one New Year's Day to the next. This has been the cause of further derision and mockery, because it compels us to reckon with years of unequal length. But in what is unequal there is life; in what is uniform and fixed there is the impress of death, and our Calendar is intended to be a creative impulse for life.

There still remains the question: how can all this be a matter of actual experience? The answer to this question will be found in the Calendar itself. As its second part you will find the ‘Calendar of the Soul’ which I myself regard as very important. For each consecutive week I have tried to draw up verses for meditation, the effect of which will enable the soul gradually to discover in itself and in its own experiences the connection with the great cosmic constellations. These formulae for meditation do in all reality lead the soul out of its narrow confines to experience of the heavens. I can assure you that the results of long, long occult investigations are contained in these 52 verses which will enable the soul to find access to happenings in the great universe and thereby to experience the Spirits working in the onward flow of Time. But if you ponder on the texts of the verses in the Calendar you will discern an element of Timelessness, in rhythmic alternation, an element that is experienced inwardly by the human being, the laws of which run parallel to those of Time in the outer world. Mere analogies do not suffice here.

Each one of you will be able to use this Calendar of the Soul every year. In it you will find something that might be described as the finding of the path leading from the human soul to the living Spirit weaving through the Universe.

I have thus tried to justify the deed that has taken the form of the Calendar. It is not to be regarded as a sudden inspiration but as something organically connected with our whole Movement.

• 1. A new edition of the Calendar is in course of preparation and will be published by the Rudolf Steiner Press. The first edition of the Calendar (1912) contained reproductions of sketches made by Imme von Eckardstein according to indications given by Dr Steiner and corresponding to each sign of the Zodiac. Subsequent editions have contained only the verses for the 52 weeks of the year, with a short Foreword by Dr Steiner. The Calendar of the Soul is contained in volume No. 40 of the Complete Centenary Edition of Dr Steiner's works, other contents of this volume being as follows: Planetentanz; Zwölf Stimmungen; Das Lied von der initiation: eine Satire; Wahrsprüche und Widmungen; Credo: Der Einzelne und das All.
  An article by Margot Rössler entitled “Rudelf Steiner's Calendar” appeared in the Spring number of Anthroposophical Quarterly in 1958 (Vol. 3, No. 1) and contains information on Imme von Eckardstein's work.

A teacher: I tried to schedule all the language classes for the same time. However, it was not possible because there are not enough language teachers. I then tried to do that at least for groups of classes. There were also other things that were not possible.

Dr. Steiner: Have you discussed the schedule? It would be desirable not to change teachers for the individual classes. We need to see if we really need Tittmann here as a new teacher. That would be reasonable if we want to unburden the present faculty.

(Dr. Steiner looks at the completed schedule.) The first thing is that the schedule must be correct. Miss D. gave English in class 3b, and Mr. N. gave French. If N. were to take French here, would that be a problem here? This schedule is not comprehensible the way it is, you can’t find your way in it. You get dizzy. If only people knew what they were doing. We need some room to write notes. It would be best if language class directly followed main lesson. The main thing is that in general, language instruction should be given from 10:00 until 12:00.

On Monday, language class for the first through fifth grades from 10:00 until 11:00. It would not be good to assign the classes to different teachers. Changing teachers would not now be possible. So, now we have languages on Monday from 10:00 until 11:00. That would be every day, Monday through Saturday from 10:00 until 11:00. That can stay as it is. What you need to realize is how it will be now. Mr. N. also has the 7a class. How much French and English do we have in 7a? One hour each on Wednesday through Saturday from 11:00 until 12:00. We need a class schedule for the present situation. That would work. We need to take the present situation into account. What I’m asking is, is there a list of what is now happening? (Dr. Steiner takes a piece of paper and writes the names of all the teachers on it.) Now I want you to write down where you are teaching. It is hard to believe we are holding a meeting about the best class schedule. A teacher makes some other suggestions.

Dr. Steiner: I just said it is not desirable to change the teachers for the classes.

A teacher: We also talked about arranging the language classes so that we can move the children around.

Dr. Steiner: We could do that later. For now, I only want to see if it is at all possible to hold the language classes in the morning and, when possible, directly after main lesson. We will be able to see that after we put everything together. I see no reason why a division into groups would not be possible if we do it right after main lesson. I do not know why that would not be possible. Dr. Steiner then takes the list of teachers and goes through the language classes in detail, class for class, in order to see whether languages can all be taught at the same time.

Dr. Steiner: We should divide them into groups. We need to begin somewhere. In general, the result will be that, with the exception of Latin and in some of the higher grades, the division into groups would be according to class. The majority of the students will remain with their class. We can achieve our goal by making the group the class. There can be only a small number of children who would need to move from one group to another.

A teacher: It will be difficult to find a plan that is not somewhat arbitrary.

Dr. Steiner: I am clear that I do not know what is happening.

A teacher: Perhaps we could ask you to give some guidelines.

Dr. Steiner: First, foreign languages should be taught immediately after main lesson when possible. Second, the language teachers should, in general, remain with their present groups. Third, after we have accomplished that for the foreign languages, the subjects we previously discussed should be taught in the morning, also. We would not need anything more than a division of things. Now, it makes no difference whatsoever whether it is classes or groups. We can use groups if we can do that. The lower grades have the least need for other groups. Of course, we have a problem when the Protestant and Catholic ministers cannot come at another time. We have fourteen teachers for English and French. There are nineteen classes, so each teacher would have seven periods. I am against overburdening the teachers and in favor of getting an additional language teacher. However, aside from that, it would be inefficient to divide the language classes into so many groups. That all came about because there was a desire to divide the languages by class. Pedagogically, there is no reason to hold to that principle past the third grade. Until that time, I admit that the main lesson teacher should also have the students for foreign languages. But there is no need to strictly follow that later.

A teacher: Partly, the question concerned grouping students according to their knowledge.

Dr. Steiner: We have too many class groups for modern languages. We do not need to have so many.

A teacher: The students in the eleventh grade want a middle certificate, and for that reason need complete instruction in English and French. Only three or four students would remain in Greek if they had to give up French and English.

Dr. Steiner: That is a radical change from when the students want to pass the humanistic examinations.

A teacher: Most of them do not want to give up modern languages.

There is a discussion about the different kinds of final examinations. There must be some clarity about which ones the students want.

Dr. Steiner: That was not the original perspective of the Waldorf School. The ancient languages were included to the extent necessary for inner reasons. Now the situation has changed, since the students want to take final examinations. We have tried to take that perspective into account in Greek and Latin by preparing the students for their final examination. We spoke about dividing things and that those taking Greek and Latin also want French, and that those taking English and French could also take Latin. That was our perspective.

A teacher: We need to know only whether the student wants to take the humanistic or the business final examination. Both would be possible through a division in our curriculum.

Dr. Steiner: I would go still further. I would say that for those students who want to take the humanistic examination, we can certainly have Latin and Greek in the morning. We could have it as part of main lesson, and we could give the classes in natural science at a later time.

A teacher: There is not much interest in Greek.

Dr. Steiner: The parents would have to decide whether the students are to take the humanistic examination.

A teacher: If there are only four or five students, should we still give Greek for them?

Dr. Steiner: Occasionally, there is the situation when a teacher works only for a few students.

A teacher: There seems to be a desire for the Middle School examination. Would it be responsible of us to allow them to leave school without English, like it is at the college prep high schools?

Dr. Steiner: We could take that responsibility if we had students who wanted to take the final examinations.

A number of teachers talk about the difficulties of dividing the students. Some students want to learn Greek, but they do not intend to take the humanistic examinations.

Dr. Steiner: We could have saved ourselves this whole discussion. We began with the assumption that we could not continue Greek and Latin in the present way simply because it is not possible to prepare the students for their final examinations. Today, though, the discussion is that there is no need at all to prepare them for that examination. We began with the assumption that we needed this terrible Greek and Latin in our curriculum so that some students who have sufficient talent might eventually be able to pass their final examinations. As I said, I thought that would be possible. Then you said it is not possible without undertaking some changes. Now, it seems that its not at all necessary to offer Latin and Greek for the examination.

What we need here is some sort of compromise. Until now, the opinion was that it was absolutely necessary to provide what a number of students would need to pass their humanities examinations in spite of the fact that for their age, they are insufficiently prepared. From that standpoint, we wanted to include Greek and Latin in the best possible way.

A teacher: The students do not want to give up English.

Dr. Steiner: Those who want to take the humanities examination will have to drop English. If they do not want to drop English, they will not be able to take the humanities examination.

Are there really only four or five who want to take the humanities examination? If we want to continue Greek, we must arrange things so that those four or five can take their examinations.

Two things are interwoven here: the requirements for the examination and whether we want to provide an opportunity for the children to learn Greek. Latin is not so important to me. We could arrange the division so that the children begin Latin and Greek together in the sixth grade and continue into the seventh, but that in the eighth grade and afterward, we have a division so that those who decide later would no longer have Greek. They would have had it, however, in the sixth and seventh grades. What is important is that what we provide is pedagogically sound. Until the end of the seventh grade, we would try to provide so much Greek as we believe is pedagogically necessary. A split would then occur in the eighth grade, and they could choose. Those who choose the humanistic direction would no longer have English, and those who decide to go in the Middle School direction would no longer have Greek.

A number of teachers raise objections to dividing the class too early.

Dr. Steiner: Then we could do it this way. Greek until the end of the eighth grade and Latin and Greek together would be required in the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. But some students might drop these subjects if their parents find them unimportant. Our general goal was to teach what people think is necessary. No one would think that students must decide at the age of ten whether they should have one subject or not. We would divide the ninth grade into either Greek or English, and at that time we would separate the Latin and Greek class. I think we would come back to the basic Waldorf School principle of giving Greek and Latin in the fifth through eighth grades, along with modern languages, and that there would be a division only in the last grades. And then the children would not be prepared for final examinations!

If we use that principle, we need to say firmly that if you want English, you can’t have Greek, but you will have Latin. Greek can conflict with English, all kinds of conflicts could arise.

There is nothing else to do other than move away from having the eleventh-grade main lesson in the first two hours of the day. We will have to have the main lesson at a later time.

There is no school that completely takes into account both the eminently important pedagogical principle of having these two periods one after another, and also preparation for the examination. That is something I have seen in English schools. Everywhere, subjects arbitrarily follow one after the other. Sometimes it is really grotesque.

We need to schedule modern languages so that we can group the children. That will be possible only if you were to—in London, when they had the election there, people had a similar line of thought. On election day the students at Oxford got together and publicized that a Mr. Bohok had been elected with twelve million votes. That was published everywhere. The city council gathered to congratulate him, but there was no such man. It is just like your class schedule—Tittmann does not exist. They even made a mannequin there. There was quite an uproar about it in England.

We said we wanted to have voice and eurythmy lessons in the morning, but we did not want to be pedantic about that. In that case, of course, we can form groups, and in the event we can form a group only at the cost of having some voice lessons in the afternoon, that is what we will do. (Speaking to a Latin and Greek teacher) How many hours do you have?

A teacher: Seventeen.

Dr. Steiner: You have one too many. You should not have more than sixteen hours in Greek and Latin. For the more scientific subjects in the higher grades, where experiments are done, you could have twenty hours. That is not possible in subjects that require real concentration.

A teacher: Perhaps we need to have some of the shop classes in the morning.

Dr. Steiner: Then we will have a mess in our class schedule again. It would certainly be desirable if we could have a different perspective. That is what is so difficult, you always bring this schematic bureaucratic perspective to the fore, and put the really important things on the back burner. This kind of thinking really has no content. I would need to have both the teaching plan and the meeting plan in front of me. They should have been here today. The problem is that we moved the division of the classes up to the ninth grade.

I once considered work on a class schedule as the opposite of pedantic. If we had it, we could see which class had which subject at what time. We would know where all the classes are, and that each class had such a schedule. From those two things, we could see where we are. We would have nineteen sheets from which we could see that one class has this and from a different sheet we could see that at the same time, one or another class is doing something else. If you have to do something like this occasionally, you can accept that you might have a light fainting spell. But when you have to spend a whole evening on it, you become dizzy. Imagine how simple it would be if I had one schedule for each class and a timetable from which I could see that this or that class is here from two until four.

The problem is that we are not doing what would actually be right, namely that we do not consider the elementary school alone, but recognize that the language teachers move throughout the different grades. If we were to make a radical change, which is not the case, and some teachers would only work in the upper grades, and those who worked there would not work in the lower grades, it would be easier. The whole problem has become quite difficult since we have lost a language teacher because he took over a class. It is really a problem that we are missing one language teacher.

Is there a student here by the name of D.L.? Is there some problem with him? Why did you write a letter?

A teacher: He caused an explosion in the physics room. We gave him a warning and wrote his mother.

Dr. Steiner: There shouldn’t be anything in the physics room that could cause an explosion. It is, in any event, troubling that something like that could occur. I once knew of a student in an upper grade who poisoned himself because the chemistry teacher was not paying attention to things. In any event, you should have left it at giving the student a warning. You should not have written anything. You never think how difficult it is when I have to fight against these things, and that people say, “That’s quite some leadership when a ten-year-old is allowed to create an explosion.” Do you think you can still do that, considering the situation we are now in? It is horrible how people think only about how they can protect themselves, but never about what the school looks like publicly. This is really astonishing. His mother is really a nice woman, but you need only imagine what kind of an impression it would make upon her to learn her boy caused an explosion. Everyone she tells this to would say, “Don’t send you child to the Waldorf School.” That is obvious. We cannot have many such occurrences.

Always feel responsible. Didn’t you think about how it would affect the school? If you provide the material for an explosion, then any boy would cause problems. I do not want to ask who was responsible for this, but someone must have left the material there. It was in the physics and laboratory rooms. The doors need to be locked.

A teacher: No one should be in the physics room when a teacher is not there.

Dr. Steiner: Thus, the room was not locked up?

A teacher: The error was that the student had permission to remain in the physics room.

Dr. Steiner: I do not understand why the laboratory is not locked. This is a really beautiful situation. Explosives and poisons are kept in the laboratory, but it is not locked so the students have easy access to them. It is quite apparent that it is not sufficient to agree that students should not be in there. It is also clear that no laboratory teacher was there when the boy was. These kinds of things are always happening.

A teacher: It was my fault. I allowed him to remain in the physics room.

Dr. Steiner: But we must have principles in such things! Then we could say that a teacher was there, and the boy did it during that time. That would show that the teacher would have to be fired. When such things happen, we have a fear that something more will happen.

(Replying to an objection) It is horrible that that word could be used here. Who cares what happens in Buxtehude? It’s still worse that it could be said here. That is no position to take. Such things simply must not occur here.

The gymnastics teacher talks about holding class outdoors. Problems could arise for the school because the students catch cold.

Dr. Steiner: If there are such complaints, we can do nothing more than wait until we have a gymnasium.

A teacher asks whether they should yield to the parents.

Dr. Steiner: The parents want their children to be here with us. In individual cases, we will have to give in to the desire of the parents. There is nothing more we can do than wait until the gymnasium is complete. It is disgruntling that it is always being put off. In the first grade, there is a boy in the first row in the corner, R.R. He needs some curative eurythmy exercises. He needs to consciously do the movements he now does for a longer period and at a much slower speed. Have him walk and pay attention to how fast he moves, and then have him do it half as fast. If he takes twenty paces in five seconds, then have him take twenty paces in ten seconds. He needs to consciously hold back. He needs to do some curative eurythmy, then these exercises, then curative eurythmy again.

You also have that boy in the yellow jacket, E.T. That is a medical problem. He could certainly do the “A, E, I exercise.” Also, he should eat some eggs that are not completely cooked. He needs to develop protein strength. In many cases, it is possible to know what we need to do to heal something. People cannot say something untrue about us if what we say needs to be done cannot be done. We need to take up a collection so the boy can have two eggs a day, at least four times in a week. He would need eight eggs. The Cologne News costs twenty-five marks, but it does not have the same nutritional value.

The school doctor asks a question concerning medicine. He needs to see quite a number of students.

Dr. Steiner: It would be good to speak about the principles. That is hardly possible before Christmas. Our English visitors will come on the eighth or ninth of January and be here for a week. If only we could at least have gymnastics then! Perhaps I could speak about medical questions in that connection. Now, we have to speak about individual students. In the future, I would like to handle that in principle. In every class, there are undernourished children. The children in the first grade were born in 1915. The health of the children born in 1914 has suffered some. That was a shock. Now we have those who are undernourished. People should have seen this coming in 1916. The war went on too long. I would like to give a basic overview of this topic, the basis of school health.

A teacher: A mother is complaining that her children do not sleep enough.

Dr. Steiner: You need to ask when the children go to bed. She should try having them go to bed a half-hour later. Concerning K.P. in the 4b class.

Dr. Steiner: He is anemic. The boy does not have enough metabolic residues. Due to the tea, he has used more of himself inwardly, and now he needs a strengthening diet. Before, he looked bad because of the bad food, and that is having an effect now. Try to get him some bread every day. If you give him malt for fourteen days, he would get used to it, and then it would be difficult to feed him normally. It would be better to give him a good piece of bread. It is quite clear that he is undernourished. In curative eurythmy, he could do the bright vowels, A, E, and I. A comment about E.V.M. in the 3b class who has headaches.

Dr. Steiner: We can easily help that through the diet. Give her some cooked cranberries every day for three weeks.

An eighth-grade teacher: Twenty-five children will be leaving at Easter, but they have not really reached the goals of elementary school. Perhaps we should take them aside and teach them the basics: reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Dr. Steiner: I would agree with that. Do it. It would also be nice if Graf Bothmer could help you.

A teacher asks about W.S. in the tenth grade. Her thyroid glands are not functioning properly.

Dr. Steiner: I once said something about this. She was in a eurythmy performance and looked as though she would not be able to complete it. The way she seems now, I think that we need to give her a preparation: 0.5% agaric (extract of amanita muscaria), then 5% berberis vulgaris, the juice of the fruit, and a little hyoscyamus niger (henbane). Thus, this berberis vulgaris 5%, 0.5% agaric, a homeopathic amount of hyoscyamus niger, 5X. There is a danger that her glands might degenerate because there is something wrong toward the back of her head.

A teacher asks about two students in the seventh grade who are misbehaving.

Dr. Steiner: It is difficult to do anything because the problem can be traced back to an abnormal growth of the meninges. It is difficult to do anything. It is too bad that our physicians do not pay more attention to such special cases. There is hardly anything more we can do other than have one of the doctors from the Therapeutic Institute come up here every week and really undertake some systematic exercises. Otherwise, we would have to put them into an institution. These are problems with the meninges. You could try to get them more interested in school.

A teacher: I cannot teach the seventh grade properly. I have too much to do for foreign languages.

Dr. Steiner: We will have to be patient until we have an additional person. I do not think you should allow your courage to wane. Things went quite well recently, particularly in that subject. The children were really interested in the perspective that you presented. I would not want you to get depressed.

A teacher asks about some particularly weak children.

Dr. Steiner: Try to include them more during class. Call upon them more often so that they remain attentive.

A teacher asks about a performance by the children in Holland.

Dr. Steiner: I only meant that you should agree upon the age of the students. We cannot drag ten-year-old children to The Hague. The very young children cannot go, only those children about whom we can say it would be responsible. Otherwise, there is nothing to say against it.

A teacher presents a request for a seminar.

Dr. Steiner: If we were to hold such a course, it would be much more reasonable if you formulated your questions and uncertainties during your meetings. Perhaps you could find two dozen pedagogical questions that would provide the basic content and theme. You already know what needs to be said. You have not studied the seminar sufficiently. It is not reflected in the way school is being held. Occasionally, one thing or another occurs, but in general, it is not visible. I would like to give such a course, but you must have specific questions. The course would include a number of things I have already addressed.

A teacher asks about the Oberufer Christmas play and whether Dr. Steiner could help.

Dr. Steiner: I cannot help you since I have not been at the rehearsals. My wife told me about it. The story is this: We were sent something from Brietkopf and Härtel that X. had printed. It states that the rights of performance are reserved. X., who knew the plays here, published the things he stole from us. People are used to such things from social parasites. He may have gone secretly to Schröer’s heirs. The Malatitsch family in Oberufer has the performance rights. Schröer bought the printing rights in 1858. I always assumed we would present it publicly before it was stolen from us. People have often asked me to publish it, but I did not think it would be responsible today. Today, the text would have to be completely revised from beginning to end. I would not have taken the responsibility of publishing something like that without a careful revision. I think it is silly to perform Brietkopf’s text. Most of the things I corrected during the rehearsals in Dornach. I made a number of important corrections, but people are like that.

A teacher asks about parents who pay no tuition.

Dr. Steiner: Why don’t you send somebody to them. We need to do this kind of work efficiently. There would be an impossible amount of work if the school association had three thousand members. We should send the secretary of the school association.

A teacher asks whether children whose parents do not want to pay should remain at the school.

Dr. Steiner: It may be that their parents do not know how to write. The school association has a secretary, and he certainly does not have much to do. Nothing is being done to increase membership.

I wish there was as much enthusiasm for the school as there is for the performance. People’s attention is diverted from the teaching. If the children were to perform something, it would not be so dangerous. I think it would be best to let it go, otherwise, you will get even deeper into the problem.

I have not really said anything against the performance. I actually believe that the better the performance is, the worse it will be for the school. I think you are as enthusiastic about it as a roly poly is about standing up.

All of our medieval stories—Parsifal, the Round Table, Hartmann von Aue—reveal mystical truths in esoteric form, even though they are usually only understood in their outward aspect. Where do we search for their origin? We must look to a time before the spread of Christianity. Into Christianity was blended what had lived in Ireland, Scotland ... [Gap in the notes.] We are led to a particular centre whence this spiritual life was disseminated. The spiritual life [of Europe] emanated from a mother lodge in Scandinavia, ‘Drottes’ Lodge. Druids = Oak. For this reason the Germanic peoples were said to receive their instructions beneath oak trees.

‘Drottes’, or Druids, were ancient Germanic initiates. They still existed in England till Elizabethan times. All that we read in the Edda or can find in the ancient German sagas refers back to the temples of the ‘Drottes’ or Druids. The author of these tales was always an initiate. The sagas not only have a symbolical or allegorical meaning, but something else as well.

Example: We know the saga of Baldur. We know that he is the hope of the gods, that he is killed by the god Loki with a branch of mistletoe. The God of Light is killed. This whole story has a deep mystery content which all who underwent initiation not only had to learn, but had to experience.

The Mysteries. Initiation: the first deed was called the search for the body of Baldur. It was supposed that Baldur was always alive. The search consisted of a complete enlightenment about the nature of man. For Baldur was the human being who has gone astray. Once upon a time the human being was not as he is today, he was undifferentiated, not bowed down by passionate experiences, but composed of finer ephemeral substance. Baldur, the radiant human being. When truly understood, all things which appear to us in the form of symbols must be understood in a higher sense. This human being who has not descended into what today we call matter, is Baldur. He lives in each one of us. The Druid priest had to search for the higher self within him. He had to become clear about where this differentiation took place, between the higher and the lower ... [Gap]

The secret of all initiation is to give birth to the higher human being within oneself. What the priest accomplishes more quickly, the rest of mankind must undergo in long stages of development. To become leaders of the rest of mankind, the Druids had to receive this initiation.

Man who had descended deeper now had to overcome matter and regain his former higher level. This birth of the higher human being takes place in all the Mysteries in a similar sort of way. The man who had become submerged in matter had to be reawakened. One had to make a series of experiences—real experiences—which were unlike any sense experiences one can have on the physical plane.

The stages. The first step was that one was led before the ‘Throne of Necessity’. One stood in front of the abyss: really experienced through one's own body what lived in the lower kingdoms of nature. Man is both mineral and plant, but the man of today is unable to experience what is undergone by the elementary substances and yet the enduring, the constraining things in the world are due to the fact that we are also mineral and plant in our nature.

The next step led the human being to all that lived in the animal kingdom. Everything which existed in the form of passions and desires was beheld in swirling and interweaving movement- All this had to be observed by the candidate for initiation so that his eyes would be opened to what lay behind the veil of the senses. Man is not aware that what swirls around in astral space is hidden behind the physical sheath. The veil of maya is really a sheath which must be penetrated by him who is to be initiated—the sheaths drop away, the human being sees clearly. That is a very special moment: the priest becomes aware that the sheaths had dammed back the impulses which would have been frightful if they had been let loose.

The third step led to a vision of the elemental nature forces. That is a step which man finds difficult to comprehend without previous preparation. That powerful occult forces are residing in these nature forces and through them express elemental passions, is something which makes man aware that there are powers quite outside the scope of anything he can experience as his own suffering.

The next trial is called the ‘Handing over of the Serpent’ by the hierophant. One can only explain it by means of the effects which it brings about. It is elucidated in the Tantalus saga. The privilege of being allowed to sit in the Council of the Gods can be abused. It signifies a reality which certainly raises man above himself, but dangers accompany it which are not exaggerated in the story of the Tantalus curse. As a rule man says he is powerless in face of the laws of nature. These are thoughts. With that kind of thinking, which is only a shadowy brain-thinking, nothing can be achieved. In creative thinking, which builds and constructs things of the world, which is productive and fruitful, the passive kind of thinking is replaced by a thinking permeated by spiritual force. The blown skin of a caterpillar is the empty sheath of the caterpillar; when filled with [productive] thinking it is the living caterpillar. Into the sheath-thoughts, living active power is poured so that the priest is enabled, not only to see the world in vision, but to work in it through magic. The danger is that this power can be abused. He can ... [Gap]

At this stage the occultist acquires a certain power, whereby he is enabled to deceive even the higher beings. He must not only repeat truths but experience them and decide whether a thing is true or false. That is what is called ‘The Handing over of the Serpent by the Hierophant’. [it denotes the same thing on a spiritual level that the rudimentary stages in the formation of the spinal cord signify on the physical level. In the animal kingdom we pass through the fishes, amphibians and so on till we reach the brain of the vertebrates and man. See notes.] We have a spiritual backbone, too, which determines whether we are to develop a spiritual brain. Man goes through this process at this stage of his development. He is lifted out of Kama (feelings, passions, desires) and endowed with a spiritual backbone so that he can be raised up into the spiraling of the spiritual brain. On a spiritual level, the windings of the labyrinth are the same as the convolutions of the brain on the physical level. Man gains access to the labyrinth, to the windings within the spiritual realm.

Then he had to take the oath of silence. A naked sword was presented to him and he was obliged to swear the most binding oath. This was that he would henceforth keep silence about his experiences where it concerned people who had not been initiated as he had. It is quite impossible to reveal the true content of these secrets without preparation. He, [the initiate] however, could create these sagas so that they became the expression of the eternal. One who could give utterance to things in this way of course had great power over his fellow men. The creator of a saga of this kind imprinted something into the human spirit. What is thus spoken is then forgotten and only the merest vestige of it survives death. Eternal truths remain longest after death. Of less elevated scientific thought hardly anything remains. The eternal does so and appears again in a new incarnation.

The Druid priest spoke out of the higher plane. His words, though simple, being the expression of higher truths, sank into the souls of his hearers. He spoke to simple folk but the truth sank into their souls and something was incorporated into them which would be reborn in a new incarnation. At that time men experienced the truth through fairy stories; thus today our spirit bodies have been prepared and if we are able to grasp higher truths today it is because we have been prepared.

Thus this time, which came to an end in 60 A.D., had prepared the spiritual life of Europe, had provided the soil on which Christianity could build. These teachings have been preserved and whoever searches will be able to find access to what was taught in these Lodges.

After he [the Druid] had given his oath on the sword he had to drink a certain draught—and this he did from a human skull. The meaning of this was that he had transcended what was human. That was the feeling which the Druid priest had to develop concerning his lower bodily nature. He had to look upon all that lived within his body with the same objective, cool attitude as he felt towards a containing vessel. Then he was initiated into the higher secrets and shown the path to higher worlds. Baldur ... [Gap] He was led into an immense palace which was roofed by flashing shields. He encountered a man who cast forth seven flowers. Cosmic Space, Cherubim, Demi-urge [Maker of the World]. Thus he became truly a Priest of the Sun.

Many people read the Edda and are unaware that it is an account of what really took place in the ancient ‘Drottes’ mysteries. An immense power lay at the disposal of the ancient ‘Drottes’ priests, a power over life and death. It is true that everything becomes corrupt in time. It was once the highest, the holiest of things. At the time when Christianity was spreading, much had degenerated and there were many black magicians, so that Christianity came as a redemption.

The study of these old truths alone is able to give an almost complete survey of the whole of occultism.

Unlike our present practice, not one stone was laid upon another in the building of a Druid temple without the use of exact astronomical measurement. Doorways were built according to astronomical measurement. The Druid priests were the builders of humanity. A faint reflection of this is preserved today in the views which the Freemasons hold.

Learning to penetrate astral substance, viewing the sun at midnight: First initiation.

Handing over of the Serpent by the Hierophant: Second Initiation.

The journey into the Labyrinth: Third Initiation.

Note on Lecture III

The only source for this lecture was the short notes of Marie Steiner von Sivers. Sentences enclosed in square brackets are the amendments of the editor, where the text seemed insufficiently clear.

Further source material has been appended below, gleaned from the writings of Charles William Heckethorn on the subject of the Druids and the Scandinavian Mysteries. A copy of Heckethorn's book in German translation was in Rudolf Steiner's private library, and from marginal notes in Rudolf Steiner's handwriting it appears to have been used by him in connection with this lecture and other lectures included in this volume. (Charles William Heckethorn Geheime Gesellschaften, Geheimbünde und Geheimlehren, Leipzig, 1900. Original English edition: The Secret Societies of all Ages and Countries, London,1875.)

From Charles William Heckethorn
The Secret Societies of all Ages and Countries
Chapter VIII. The Druids.

The Druids, the Magi of the West.
The secret doctrines of the Druids were much the same as those of the Gymnosophists and Brahmins of India, the Magi of Persia, the priests of Egypt, and of all other priests of antiquity. Like them they had two sets of religious doctrines, exoteric and esoteric. Their rites were practised in Britain and Gaul, though they were brought to a much greater perfection in the former country, where the Isle of Anglesey was considered their chief seat. The word Druid is generally supposed to be derived from “an oak,” which tree was particularly sacred among them, though its etymology may also be found in the Gaelic word Druidh, “a wise man” or “magician.”

Temples.
Their temples, wherein the sacred fire was preserved, were generally situate on eminences and in dense groves of oaks, and assumed various forms—circular, because a circle was an emblem of the universe; oval, in allusion to the mundane egg, from which, according to the traditions of many nations, the universe, or according to others, our first parents, issued; serpentine, because a serpent was the symbol of Hu, the Druidic Osiris; cruciform, because a cross is an emblem of regeneration; or winged, to represent the motion of the divine spirit. Their only canopy was the sky, and they were constructed of unhewn stones, their numbers having reference to astronomical calculations. In the centre was placed a stone of larger dimensions than the others, and worshipped as the representative of the Deity. The three principal temples of this description in Britain were undoubtedly those of Stonehenge and Avebury in the south, and that of Shap in Cumbria. Where stone was scarce, rude banks of earth were substituted, and the temple was formed of a high vallum and ditch. The most Herculean labours were performed in their construction; Stukeley says that it would cost, at the present time, £20,000 to throw up such a mound as Silbury Hill.

Places of Initiation.
The adytum or ark of the mysteries was called a cromlech, and was used as the sacred pastos, or place of regeneration. It consisted of three upright stones, as supporters of a broad, flat stone laid across them on the top, so as to form a small cell. Kit Cotey's House, in Kent, was such a pastos. Considerable space, however, was necessary for the machinery of initiation in its largest and most comprehensive scale. Therefore, the Coer Sidi, where the mysteries of Druidism were performed, consisted of a range of buildings, adjoining the temple, containing apartments of all sizes, cells, vaults, baths, and long and artfully contrived passages, with all the apparatus of terror used on these occasions. Most frequently these places were subterranean; and many of the caverns in this country were the scenes of Druidical initiation. The stupendous grotto at Castleton, in Derbyshire [Peak Cavern], called by Stukeley the Stygian Cave, as well as the “Giants Caves” between Luckington and Badminton [in Wilts.], certainly were used for this purpose.

Rites.
The system of Druidism embraced every religious and philosophical pursuit then known in these islands. The rites bore an undoubted reference to astronomical facts. Their chief deities are reducible to two,—a male and a female, the great father and mother, Hu and Ceridwen, distinguished by the same characteristics as belonged to Osiris and Isis, Bacchus and Ceres, or any other supreme god and goddess representing the two principles of all being. The grand periods of initiation were quarterly, and determined by the course of the sun, and his arrival at the equinoctial and solstitial points. But the time of annual celebration was May-eve, when fires were kindled on all the cairns and cromlechs throughout the island, which burned all night to introduce the sports of May-day, whence all the national sports formerly or still practised date their origin. Round these fires choral dances were performed in honour of the sun, who, at this season was figuratively said to rise from his tomb. The festival was licentious, and continued till the luminary had attained his meridian height, when priests and attendants retired to the woods, where the most disgraceful orgies were perpetrated. But the solemn initiations were performed at midnight, and contained three degrees, the first or lowest being the Eubates, the second the Bards, and the third the Druids. The candidate was first placed in the pastos bed, or coffin, where his symbolical death represented the death of Hu, or the sun; and his restoration in the third degree symbolized the resurrection of the sun. He had to undergo trials and tests of courage similar to those practised in the mysteries of other countries, and which therefore need not be detailed here.

The festival of the 25th of December was celebrated with great fires lighted on the tops of the hills, to announce the birth-day of the god Sol. This was the moment when, after the supposed winter solstice, he began to increase, and gradually to ascend. This festival indeed was kept not by the Druids only, but throughout the ancient world, from India to Ultima Thule. The fires, of course, were typical of the power and ardour of the sun, whilst the evergreens used on the occasion foreshadowed the results of the sun's renewed action on vegetation. The festival of the summer solstice was kept on the 24th of June. Both days are still kept as festivals in the Christian church, the former as Christmas, the latter as St. John's Day; because the early Christians judiciously adopted not only the festival days of the pagans, but also, so far as this could be done with propriety, their mode of keeping them; substituting, however, a theological meaning for astronomical allusions. The use of evergreens in churches at Christmas time is the Christian perpetuation of an ancient Druidic custom.

Doctrines.
The Druids taught the doctrine of one supreme being, a future state of rewards and punishments, the immortality of the soul and a metempsychosis. It was a maxim with them that water was the first principle of all things, and existed before the creation in unsullied purity, which seems a contradiction to their other doctrine that day was the offspring of night, because night or chaos was in existence before day was created. They taught that time was only an intercepted fragment of eternity, and that there was an endless succession of worlds. In fact, their doctrines were chiefly those of Pythagoras. They entertained great veneration for the numbers three, seven, nineteen (the Metonic cycle), and one hundred and forty-seven, produced by multiplying the square of seven by three. They also practised vaticination [prophecy], pretending to predict future events from the flights of birds, human sacrifices, by white horses, the agitation of water, and lots. They seem, however, to have possessed considerable scientific knowledge.

Political and Judicial Power.
Their authority in many cases exceeded that of the monarch. They were, of course, the sole interpreters of religion, and consequently superintended all sacrifices; for no private person was allowed to offer a sacrifice without their sanction. They possessed the power of excommunication, which was the most horrible punishment that could be inflicted next to that of death, and from the effects of which the highest magistrate was not exempt. The great council of the realm was not competent to declare war or conclude peace without their concurrence. They determined all disputes by a final and unalterable decision, and had the power of inflicting the punishment of death. And, indeed, their altars streamed with the blood of human victims. Holocausts of men, women, and children, inclosed in large towers of wicker-work, were sometimes sacrificed as a burnt offering to their superstitions, which were, at the same time, intended to enhance the consideration of the priests, who were an ambitious race delighting in blood. The Druids, it is said, preferred such as had been guilty of theft, robbery, or other crimes, as most acceptable to their gods; but when there was a scarcity of criminals, they made no scruple to supply their place with innocent persons. These dreadful sacrifices were offered by the Druids, for the public, on the eve of a dangerous war, or in the time of any national calamity; and also for particular persons of high rank, when they were afflicted with any dangerous disease.

Priestesses.
The priestesses, clothed in white, and wearing a metal girdle, foretold the future from the observation of natural phenomena, but more especially from human sacrifices. For them was reserved the frightful task of putting to death the prisoners taken in war, and individuals condemned by the Druids; and their auguries were drawn from the manner in which the blood issued from the many wounds inflicted, and also from the smoking entrails. Many of these priestesses maintained a perpetual virginity, others gave themselves up to the most luxurious excesses. They dwelt on lonely rocks, beaten by the waves of the ocean which the mariners looked upon as temples surrounded with unspeakable prodigies. Thus the island of Sena or Liambis, The Saints, near Ushant, was the residence of certain of these priestesses, who delivered oracles to sailors; and there was no power that was not attributed to them. Others, living near the mouth of the Loire, once a year destroyed their temple, scattered its materials, and, having collected others, built a new one—of course a symbolical ceremony; and if one of the priestesses dropped any of the sacred materials, the others fell upon her with fierce yells, tore her to pieces, and scattered her bleeding limbs.

Abolition.
As the Romans gained ground in these islands the power of the Druids gradually declined; and the were finally assailed by Suetonius Paulinus, governor of Britain under Nero, A.D. 61, in their stronghold, the Isle of Anglesey, and entirely defeated, the conqueror consuming many of them in the fires which they had kindled for burning the Roman prisoners they had expected to make—a very just retaliation upon these sanguinary priests. But though their dominion was thus destroyed, many of their religious practices continued much longer; and so late as the eleventh century, in the reign of Canute, it was necessary to forbid the people to worship the sun, moon, fires, etc. Certainly many of the practices of the Druids are still adhered to in Freemasonry; and some writers on this Order endeavour to show that it was established soon after the edict of Canute, and that as thereby the Druidical worship was prohibited in toto, the strongest oaths were required to bind the initiated to secrecy.

Chapter IX. Scandinavian Mysteries

Drottes.
The priests of Scandinavia were named Drottes, and instituted by Sigge, a Scythian prince, who is said afterwards to have assumed the name of Odin. Their number was twelve, who were alike priests and judges; and from this order proceeded the establishment of British juries. Their power was extended to its utmost limits, by being allowed a discretionary privilege of determining on the choice of human victims for sacrifice, from which even the monarch was not exempt—hence arose the necessity of cultivating the goodwill of these sovereign pontiffs; and as this order, like the Israelitish priesthood, was restricted to one family, they became possessed of unbounded wealth, and at last became so tyrannical as to be objects of terror to the whole community. Christianity, promising to relieve it from this yoke, was hailed with enthusiasm; and the inhabitants of Scandinavia, inspired with a thirst for vengeance on account of accumulated and long-continued suffering, retaliated with dreadful severity on their persecutors, overthrowing the palaces and temples, the statues of their gods, and all the paraphernalia of Gothic superstition. Of this nothing remains but a few cromlechs; some stupendous monuments of rough stone, which human fury could not destroy; certain ranges of caverns hewn out of the solid rock; and some natural grottos used for the purpose of initiation.

Rituals.
The whole ritual had an astronomical bearing. The places of initiation, as in other mysteries, were in caverns, natural or artificial, and the candidate had to undergo trials as frightful as the priests could render them. But instead of having to pass through seven caves or passages, as in the Mithraic and other mysteries, he descended through nine—the square of the mystic number three—subterranean passages, and he was instructed to search for the body of Baldur, the Scandinavian Osiris, slain by Loki, the principle of darkness, and to use his utmost endeavours to raise him to life. To enter into particulars of the process of initiation would involve the repetition of what has been said before; it may therefore suffice to observe that the candidate on arriving at the sacellum had a solemn oath administered to him on a naked sword, and ratified it by drinking mead out of a human skull. The sacred sign of the cross was impressed upon him, and a ring of magic virtues, the gift of Baldur the Good, delivered to him.

Astronomical Meaning Demonstrated.
The first canto of the Edda, which apparently contains a description of the ceremonies performed on the initiation of an aspirant, says that he seeks to know the sciences possessed by the Aesas or gods. He discovers a palace, whose roof of boundless dimensions is covered with golden shields. He encounters a man engaged in launching upwards seven flowers. Here we easily discover the astronomical meaning: the palace is the world, the roof the sky; the golden shields are the stars, the seven flowers the seven planets. The candidate is asked what is his name, and replies Gangler, that is, the wanderer, he that performs a revolution, distributing necessaries to mankind; for the candidate personates the sun. The palace is that of the king, the epithet the ancient Mystagogues gave to the head of the planetary system. Then he discovers three seats; on the lowest is the king called Har, sublime; on the central one, Jafuhar, the equal of the sublime; on the highest Tredie, the number three. These personages are those the neophyte beheld in the Eleusinian initiation, the hierophant, the daduchus or torchbearer, and the epibomite or attendant on the altar; those he sees in Freemasonry, the master, and the senior and junior wardens, symbolical personifications of the sun, moon, and Demiurgus, or grand architect of the universe. But the Scandinavian triad is usually represented by Odin, the chief deity; Thor, his first-born, the reputed mediator between god and man, possessing unlimited power over the universe, wherefore his head was surrounded by a circle of twelve stars; and Freya, a hermaphrodite, adorned with a variety of symbols significant of dominion over love and marriage. In the instructions given to the neophyte, he is told that the greatest and most ancient of gods is called Alfader (the father of all), and has twelve epithets, which recall the twelve attributes of the sun, the twelve constellations, the twelve superior gods of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Among the gods of the Scandinavian theogony there is Baldur the Good, whose story, as already hinted above, formed the object of the initiatory ceremonies. Baldur is Mithras, the sun's love. He foresees the danger that threatens him; he dreams of it at night. The other gods of Valhalla, the Scandinavian Olympus, to whom he reveals his sad fore-bodings, reassure him, and to guard against any harm befalling him, exact an oath from every thing in nature on his behalf, except from the mistletoe, which was omitted on account of its apparently inoffensive qualities. For an experiment, and in sport, the gods cast at Baldur all kinds of missiles, without wounding him. Hoder the blind [that is, Fate], takes no part in the diversion; but Loki [the principle of evil, darkness, the season of winter] places a sprig in the hands of Hoder, and persuades him to cast it at the devoted victim, who falls pierced with mortal wounds. For this reason it was that this plant was gathered at the winter solstice by the Druids of Scandinavia, Gaul, and Britain, with a curved knife, whose form symbolised the segment of the zodiacal circle during which the murder of Baldur took place. In the Edda of Snorro we have another legend of Odin and Freya, the Scandinavian Isis or Venus, giving an account of the wanderings of the latter in search of the former, which, of course, have the same astronomical meaning as the search of Isis for Osiris, of Ceres for Proserpine, etc. One of the chief festivals in the year, as with the Druids, was the winter solstice; and this being the longest night in the year, the Scandinavians assigned to it the formation of the world from primeval darkness, and called it “Mother Night.” This festival was denominated “Yule,” and was a season of universal festivity.

In close connection with what I had to bring before you in the lectures given at our Christmas Foundation Meeting, I should like, in the lectures that are now to be given, to speak further of the movement that is leading us in modern times to research into the life of the spirit. I refer to the movement spoken of under the name of Rosicrucianism or some other occult designation, and I should like to take this opportunity of giving you a picture of it in its inner aspect and nature. It will be necessary first of all to say something, by way of introduction, about the whole manner of forming ideas which had become customary round about the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries A.D., and which only very gradually disappeared; for it is even to be found here and there among stragglers, as it were as late as the nineteenth century. I do not want today to deal with the matter from a historical point of view, but rather to place before your mind's eye conceptions and ideas that you are to think of as inwardly experienced by certain people belonging to these centuries. In point of fact it is not generally realised that we have only to go back a comparatively short time in history, to find that the men who were accounted to be scholars were possessed of a world of ideas altogether different from our own.

In these days we speak of chemical substances, we enumerate seventy or eighty chemical elements; but we have no idea how very little we are saying when we name one substance as oxygen, another as nitrogen, and so on. Oxygen, for instance, is something that is present only under certain well-defined conditions—conditions of warmth, e.g., and other circumstances of earthly life, and it is impossible for a reasonable person to unite a conception of reality with something that, when the temperature is raised by so and so many degrees, is no longer present in the same measure or manner as it is under the conditions that obtain for man's physical life on Earth. It was the realisation of facts like this that underlay research during the early and middle part of the Middle Ages; the life of research of those times set out to get beyond the relative in existence, to arrive at true existence.

I have marked a transition as between the ninth and tenth centuries A.D., because before this time man's perceptions were still altogether spiritual. It would never, for example, have occurred to a scholar of the ninth century to imagine Angels, Archangels, or Seraphim as falling short in respect of reality—purely in respect of reality—of the physical men he saw with his eyes. You will find that before the tenth century, scholars always speak of the spiritual Beings, the so-called Intelligences of the Cosmos, as of beings one actually meets in life. The people of that time were of course well aware that the day was long past when such vision had been common human experience, but they knew that in certain circumstances the meeting could still take place. We must not, for instance, overlook the fact that on into the ninth and tenth centuries countless priests of the Catholic Church were quite conscious of how, in the course of their celebration of the Mass, it happened that in this or that enactment they met spiritual Beings, the Intelligences of the Cosmos. With the ninth and tenth centuries, however, the direct and immediate connection with the Intelligences of the Universe began to disappear from men's consciousness; and there began to light up, in its place, the consciousness of the Elements of the Cosmos, the earthy, the fluid or watery, the airy, the warm or fiery. And so it came about that just as hitherto men had spoken of Cosmic Intelligences that rule the movements of the planets, that lead the planets across the constellations of the fixed stars, and so forth, now they spoke instead of the immediate environment of the Earth. They spoke of the elements of earth, water, air, fire. Of chemical substances, in the modern sense of the word, they did not as yet take account. That came much later. It would, however, be a great mistake to imagine that the scholars of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries—even in a sense, the scholars of the eighteenth century—had ideas of warmth, air, water, earth, that resembled the ideas men have today. Warmth is spoken of today merely as a condition in which bodies exist. No one speaks any longer of actual warmth-ether. Air, water—these have likewise become for the modern man completely abstract. It is time we studied these ideas and learned to enter into a true understanding of them. And so today I should like to give you a picture, showing you how a scholar of those times would speak to his pupils.

When I wrote my Outline of Occult Science I was obliged to make the account of the evolution of the Earth accord at any rate a little with the prevailing ideas of the present day. In the thirteenth and twelfth centuries one would have been able to give the account quite differently. The following might then have been found in a certain chapter, e.g., of Outline of Occult Science. An idea would have been called up, to begin with, of the Beings who may be designated as the Beings of the First Hierarchy: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones. The Seraphim would have been characterised as Beings with whom there is no subject and object, with whom subject and object are one and the same, Beings who would not say: Outside me are things—but: The world is, and I am the World, and the World is I. Such Beings know only of themselves, and this knowledge of themselves is for them an inner experience of which man has a weak reflection when he has the experience of being filled, shall we say, with a glowing enthusiasm. It is, you know, quite difficult to make the man of today understand what is meant by “glowing enthusiasm.” Even in the beginning of the nineteenth century men knew better what it is than they do today. In those days it could still happen that some poem or other was being read aloud and the people were so filled with enthusiasm—forgive me, but it really was so—that present-day man would say they had all gone out of their minds. They were so moved, so warmed! Today people freeze up just when you expect them to be “enthused.” Now it was lifting this element of enthusiasm, this rapture of the soul that came naturally especially to the men of Middle and Eastern Europe—it was by lifting it into consciousness, by making it alone the complete content of consciousness, that men came to form an idea of the inner life of the Seraphim. Again as a bright, clear element in consciousness, full of light, so that thought turns directly into light, illuminating everything—such an idea did men form of the element of consciousness of the Cherubim. And the element of consciousness of the Thrones was conceived as sustaining, bearing the worlds in Grace.

There you have one such sketch. I could go on speaking of it for a long time. For the moment I only wanted to show you that in those days one would have tried to describe the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones in the true qualities of their being.

And then one would have gone on to say: the Choir of Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones works together, in such wise that the Thrones found and establish a kernel; the Cherubim let their own light-filled being stream forth from this centre or kernel; and the Seraphim enwrap the whole in a mantle of warmth and enthusiasm that rays far out into cosmic space. [Footnote: Drawings were made on the blackboard, with coloured chalks.]

All the drawing I have made is Beings: in the midst the Thrones; in the circumference around them the Cherubim; and, outermost of all, the Seraphim. All is essential Being, Beings who move and weave into one another, do, think, will, feel in one another. All is of the very essence of Being. And now, if a being having the right sensitiveness were to take its path through the space where the Thrones have in this manner established a kernel and centre, where the Cherubim have made a kind of circling around it and the Seraphim have, as it were, enclosed the whole—if a being with the required sensitiveness were to come into this realm of the activity of the First Hierarchy, it would feel warmth in varying differentiations—here greater warmth, there less; but it would all be an experience of soul, and yet at the same time physical experience in the senses; that is to say, when the being felt itself warm in soul, the feeling would be actually the feeling you have when you are in a well-warmed room.

Such a united building-up by Beings of the First Hierarchy did verily once take place in the Universe; it formed what we call the Saturn existence. The warmth is merely the expression of the fact that the Beings are there. The warmth is nothing more than the expression of the fact that the Beings are there.

A picture will perhaps make clearer to you what I mean. Let us suppose you have an affection for a certain human being. You feel his presence gives you warmth. But now someone comes along who is frightfully abstract and says: “The person himself doesn't interest me, I will imagine him absent; the warmth he sheds around him, that alone is what interests me.” Or suppose he doesn't even say “The warmth he sheds around him is all that interests me.” Suppose he says: “The warmth is all that interests me.” He talks nonsense, of course, you will see that at once; for if the man is not there who sheds the warmth, then the warmth is not there either. The warmth is in any case only there when the man is there. In itself it is nothing. The man must be there, if the warmth is to be there. Even so must Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones be there; if the Beings are not there, neither is the warmth. The warmth is merely the revelation of Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones.

Now in the time of which I speak, everything was exactly as I have described it. Men spoke of Elements. They spoke of the Element of Warmth, and by the Element of Warmth they understood Cherubim, Seraphim, Thrones—and that is the Saturn existence.

The description went further. It was said: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones—these alone have the power to bring forth something of the nature of Saturn, to place it into the Cosmos. The highest Hierarchy alone is capable of placing such an existence into the Cosmos. But when this highest Hierarchy had once placed it there and a new world-becoming had taken its start, then the evolution could go on further. The Sun, as it were, that is formed of Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones could carry evolution further. And it came to pass in the following manner. Beings of the Second Hierarchy, Kyriotetes, Dynamis, Exusiai, Beings that had been generated by the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones, press into the space that has been formed through the working of Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones, that has been fashioned to Saturn warmth. Thither entered younger, cosmically younger Beings. And how did these cosmically younger Beings work? Whereas the Cherubim, Seraphim and Thrones reveal themselves in the Element of Warmth, the Beings of the second Hierarchy form themselves in the Element of Light. Saturn is dark; it gives warmth. And now within the dark world of the Saturn existence arises that which can arise through the working of the Sons of the First Hierarchy, through Exusiai, Dynamis and Kyriotetes.

What is it that is able now to arise within the Saturn warmth? The penetration of the Second Hierarchy signifies an inner illumination. The Saturn Warmth is inwardly shone through with light and at the same time it becomes denser. Instead of only the Warmth Element there is now also Air. And in the revelation of Light we have the entry of the Second Hierarchy.

You must clearly understand that it is in very deed and truth Beings who thus press their way into the Saturn existence. One who had the requisite power of perception would see the event as a penetration of Light; it is Light that reveals the path of the Beings. And wherever Light occurs, there occurs too, under certain conditions, shadow, darkness, dark shadow. Through the Penetration by the Second Hierarchy in the form of Light, shadow also comes to pass. What is shadow? It is Air. And indeed until the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries men knew what Air is. Today men know only that air consists of oxygen, nitrogen and so forth. When that is said, it is very much as if someone were to say about a watch that it consisted of glass and silver. He would be saying nothing at all about the watch. And nothing at all is said about Air as a cosmic phenomenon when we say that it consists of oxygen and nitrogen. We say very much, on the other hand, if we know: Air comes forth from the Cosmos as the shadow of Light. In actual fact we have, with the entry of the second Hierarchy into the Saturn warmth, the entry of Light and we have too the shadow of Light, Air. And when we have this we have Sun. Such is the way one would have had to speak in the thirteenth and twelfth centuries.

And what follows after this? The further evolution comes about through the working of the Sons of the Second Hierarchy—Archai, Archangels, Angels. The Second Hierarchy have accomplished the entry of the Element of Light, Light that has drawn after it its shadow, the darkness of Air—not the indifferent, neutral darkness that belongs to Saturn, the darkness that is simply absence of Light, but the darkness that is wrought out as the antithesis of Light. And now to this Element of Light the Third Hierarchy—Archai, Archangels, Angels—add through their own nature and being a new Element, an Element that is like our human desire, like our impulse to strive after something, to long for something. Thereby the following comes to pass.

Let us suppose an Archai or Archangel Being enters, and comes upon an Element of Light, encounters, as it were, a place of Light. In this place of Light the Being receives, through its receptivity for the Light, the urge, the desire for darkness. The Angel Being bears Light into darkness—or an Angel Being bears darkness into Light. These Beings are mediators, messengers between Light and Darkness. It follows from this that what previously has only shone in Light and drawn after it its shadow, the darkness of Air, begins now to shine in colour, to glow in a play of colour. Light begins to appear in darkness, darkness in light. The Third Hierarchy create colour out of light and darkness.

Here we may find a connection with something that is historical, with something that is to be found in written document. For in the time of Aristotle men still knew, when they contemplated in the Mysteries, whence colours come; they knew that the Beings of the Third Hierarchy have to do with colour. Therefore Aristotle, in his colour harmony, showed that colour signifies a working together of Light and Darkness. But this spiritual element in man's thought, whereby he knew that behind Warmth he has to see Beings of the First Hierarchy, behind Light and its shadow Darkness, Beings of the Second Hierarchy, and behind the iridescent play of Colour he has to see in a great cosmic harmony, Beings of the Third Hierarchy—this spiritual element in man's thought has been lost. And nothing is left for man today but the unhappy Newtonian Theory of Colour. The Initiates continued to smile at Newton's theory till the eighteenth century, but in that time it became an article of faith for professional physicists.

One must indeed have lost all knowledge of the spiritual world when one can speak in the sense of Newton's Theory of Colour. If one is still inwardly stimulated by the spiritual world, as was the case with Goethe, then one resists it. One places before men the truth of the matter, as Goethe did, and attacks with might and main. For Goethe never censured so hardly as when he had to censure Newton, he went for him and his theory hammer and tongs! Such a thing is incomprehensible nowadays, for the simple reason that in our time anyone who does not recognise the Newtonian Theory of Colour is a fool in the eyes of the physicists. But things were different in Goethe's time. He did not stand alone. True, he stood alone as one who spoke openly on the matter; but there were others who really knew, even as late as the end of the eighteenth century, whence colour comes, who knew with absolute certainty how colour wells up from within the Spiritual.

But now we must go further. We have seen that Air is the shadow of Light. And as, when Light arises, under certain conditions we find the dark shadow, so when colour is present and works as a reality—and it can do so, for when it penetrates into the Air-element, it flames up in this Air, works in it, in a word is something, is no mere reflection but a reality flashing and sparkling in the Air-element—when this is so, then under certain conditions we get pressure, counter-pressure, and out of the real Colour there comes into being the fluid, the Element of Water. As, for cosmic thinking, the shadow of Light is Air, so is Water the reflection, the creation of Colour in the Cosmos.

You will say: No, that I cannot understand! But try for once really to grasp Colour in its true meaning. Red—surely you do not think that red is, in its essence, the neutral surface it is generally regarded as being? Red is something that makes an attack upon you.—I have often spoken of this.—You want to run away from red; it thrusts you back. Blue-violet, on the other hand, you want to run after! It runs away from you all the time; it grows deeper and ever deeper. Everything is contained in the colours. The colours are a world, and the soul element in the world of colour simply cannot exist without movement; we ourselves, if we follow the colours with soul-experience, must follow with movement.

People gaze open-eyed at the rainbow. [Footnote: A sketch of a rainbow was made on the blackboard with chalks of the colours as seen in the sky: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet.] But if you look at the rainbow with a little imagination, you may see there elemental Beings. These elemental Beings are full of activity and demonstrate it in a very remarkable manner. Here (at yellow) you see some of them streaming forth from the rainbow, continually coming away out of it. They move across and the moment they reach the lower end of the green they are drawn to it again. You see them disappear at this point (green). On the other side they come out again. To one who views it with imagination, the whole rainbow manifests a streaming out of spirit and a disappearing of it again within. It is like a spiritual dance, in very deed a spiritual waltz, wonderful to behold. And you may observe too how these spiritual Beings come forth from the rainbow with terrible fear, and how they go in with invincible courage. When you look at the red-yellow, you see fear streaming out, and when you look at the blue-violet you have the feeling: there all is courage and bravery of heart.

Now picture to yourselves: There before me is no mere rainbow! Beings are coming out of it and disappearing into it—here anxiety and fear, there courage ... And now, here the rainbow receives a certain thickness and you will be able to imagine how this gives rise to the element of Water. In this watery element spiritual Beings live, Beings that are actually a kind of copy of the Beings of the Third Hierarchy.

There is no doubt about it: if we want to get near the men of real knowledge in the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries, we must understand these things. Indeed we cannot even understand the men of still later times, we cannot understand Albertus Magnus, if we read him with the knowledge we have today. We must read him with a manner of knowledge that takes account of the fact that spiritual things like these were still a reality for him: only then shall we understand how he expresses himself, how he uses his words.

Thus we have, as a reflection of the Hierarchies, first Air and then Water. The Hierarchies themselves dive in, as it were—the second Hierarchy in the form of Light, the third Hierarchy in the form of Colour. And with this latter event the Moon existence is attained.

And now we come to the Fourth Hierarchy. (I am telling it, you remember, as it was thought of in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.) We today do not speak of the Fourth Hierarchy; but men still spoke in that way in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. What is this Fourth Hierarchy? It is Man. Man himself is the fourth Hierarchy. But by the Fourth Hierarchy was not meant the two-legged being that goes about the world today, ageing year by year! To the true man of knowledge of those times, present-day man would have appeared as something very strange. No, in those times they spoke of original Man, of Man before the Fall, who still bore a form that gave him power over the Earth, even as the Angels and Archangels and Archai had power over the Moon existence, the second Hierarchy over the Sun existence and the first Hierarchy over the Saturn existence. They spoke of Man in his original Earthly existence and then they were right to speak of him as the Fourth Hierarchy. And with this Fourth Hierarchy came—as a gift it is true, of the higher Hierarchies, but the higher Hierarchies have held it only as a possession they did not themselves use but guarded and kept—with the Fourth Hierarchy came Life. Into the world of Colour, into the iridescent world of changing colour, of which I have only been able to give you the merest hints and suggestions, came Life.

You will say: Then did nothing live before this time? My dear friends, you can understand how it is from the human being himself. Your Ego and your astral body have not life, and yet they exist, they have being. That which is of the soul and the spirit does not need life. Life begins only with your etheric body. And the etheric body is something external, it is of the nature of a sheath. Thus only after the Moon existence and with the Earth existence does Life enter into the domain of that evolution to which our Earth belongs. The world of moving, glancing colour is quickened to life. And now not only do Angels and Archangels and Archai experience a longing desire to carry Darkness into Light, and Light into Darkness, thereby calling forth the play of colour in the planet; now a desire becomes manifest to experience this play of colour as something inward, to feel it all inwardly; when Darkness dominates Light, to feel weakness, laziness; when Light dominates Darkness, to feel activity. For what is happening really, when you run? When you run, Light predominates over Darkness in you; when you sit and are lazy and indolent, then Darkness predominates over Light. It is a play of Colour, an activity of Colour, not physical, but of the soul. Colour permeated with Life, in its iridescence streamed-through with Life—that is what appeared with the coming of the Fourth Hierarchy, Man. And in this moment of cosmic becoming, the forces that became active in the play of colour began to build contours, began to fashion forms. Life, as it rounded off and moulded the colours, called into being the hard, fast form of the crystal. And we have come into Earth existence.

Such things as I have been describing to you were fundamental truths for the mediaeval alchemists and occultists, Rosicrucians and others, who flourished—though history tells us little of them—from the ninth and tenth on into the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and of whom stragglers are to be found as late as the eighteenth and even the beginning of the nineteenth century—always however in these later times regarded as strange and eccentric people. Only with the entry of the nineteenth century did this knowledge become entirely hidden. Only then did men come to acquire a conception of the world that led them to a point of view which I will indicate in the following way. Imagine, my dear friends, that here we have a man. Suppose I cease to have any interest in this man, but I take his clothes and hang them on a coat-hanger that has a knob here above like a head. From now on I take no further interest in the man and I tell myself: There is the man! What does it matter to me what can be put into these clothes? That, the coat-hanger with the clothes, is the man! This is really what happened with the Elements. It does not interest us any longer that behind Warmth or Fire is the First Hierarchy, behind Light and Air the Second Hierarchy, behind what we call Chemical Ether or Colour Ether and Water the Third Hierarchy, and behind the Life Element and Earth the Fourth Hierarchy, Man.—The peg, the hanger and on it the clothes.—That is all!

There you have the first Act of the drama. The second Act begins with Kant! One has there the hanger and the clothes hanging on it, and one begins to philosophise in true Kantian fashion as to what the “thing-in-itself” of these clothes may be. And one comes to a realisation that the “thing-in-itself” of the clothes cannot be known. Very clever, very clever indeed! Of course, if you first take away the man and have only the coat-hanger with the clothes, you can philosophise over the clothes, you can make most beautiful speculations! You can either philosophise in Kantian fashion and say: “The ‘thing-in-itself’ cannot be known,” or in the fashion of Helmholtz and think to yourself: “But these clothes, they cannot of themselves have forms; there is nothing really there but tiny, whirling specks of dust, tiny atoms, which hit and strike each other and behold, the clothes are held in their form!”

Yes, my friends, that is the way thought has developed in recent times. It is all abstract, shadowy. And yet we live today in this way of thinking, in this way of speculating; it gives the stamp to our whole natural-scientific outlook. And when we do not admit that we think in this atomistic way, then we do it most of all! For we are very far from admitting that it is quite unnecessary to dream of a whirling dance of atoms, and that what we have rather to do is to put back the man into the clothes. This is however the very thing which the renewal of Spiritual Science must try to do.

I wanted to indicate to you today, in a number of pictures, the nature and manner of thinking in earlier centuries and what is really contained in the older writings, although it has become obscure. The very obscurity, however, has led to incidents that are not without interest. A Norwegian scientist of today has reprinted a passage from the writings of Basilius Valentinus and has interpreted it in terms of modern chemistry. He could not possibly say otherwise than that it is nonsense, because this is what it appears to be if, in the modern sense, one thinks of a chemist standing in a laboratory, making experiments with retorts and other up-to-date apparatus. What Basilius Valentinus really gives in this passage is a fragment of embryology, expressed in pictures. That is what he gives—a fragment of embryology. According to the modern mode of thought it seems to indicate a laboratory experiment, which then proves to be nonsense. For you will not expect to reproduce the real processes of embryology in a retort—unless you be like the mediaevally minded Wagner of Goethe's Faust.

It is time that these things were understood. And in connection with the great truths of which I was able to speak during the Christmas Foundation Meeting, I shall have more to say concerning the spiritual life and its history during the last few centuries.

We should not underestimate the significance it once held for mankind to focus the whole attention during the year on a festival-time. Although in our time the celebration of religious festivals is largely a matter of habit, it was not always so. There were times when people united their consciousness with the course of the year; when, let us say, at the beginning of the year, they felt themselves standing within the course of time in such a way that they said to themselves: “There is such and such a degree of cold or warmth now; there are certain relationships among the other weather conditions, certain relationships also between the growth or non-growth in plants or animals.”—People experienced along with Nature the gradual changes and metamorphoses she went through. But they shared this experience with Nature in such a way—when their consciousness was united with the natural phenomena—that they oriented this consciousness toward a specific festival. Let us say, at the beginning of the year, through the various feeling perceptions associated with the passing of winter, the consciousness was directed toward the Easter time, or in the fall, with the fading away of life, toward Christmas. Then men's souls were filled with feelings which found expression in the way they related themselves to what the festivals meant to them.

Thus people partook in the course of the year, and this participation meant for the most part permeating with spirit not only what they saw and heard around them but what they experienced with their whole human being. They experienced the course of the year as an organic life process, just as in the human being when he is a child we relate the utterances of the childish soul with the awkward movements of a child, or its imperfect way of speaking. As we connect specific soul-experiences with the change of teeth, other soul experiences with the later bodily changes, so men once saw the ruling and weaving of the spiritual in the successive changes of outer nature, in growth and decline, or in a waxing followed by a waning.

Now all this cannot help affecting the whole way man feels himself as earthly man in the universe. Thus we can say that in that period at the beginning of our reckoning of time, when the remembrance of the Event of Golgotha began to be celebrated which later became the Easter festival—in that period in which the Easter festival was livingly felt and perceived, when man still took part in the turning of the year as I have just described it—then it was in essence so, that people felt their own lives surrendered, given over to the outer spiritual-physical world. Their feeling told them that in order to make their lives complete, they had need of the vision of the Entombment and the Resurrection, of that sublime image of the Mystery of Golgotha.

But it is from filling the consciousness in such a way that inspirations arise for men. People are not always conscious of these inspirations, but it is a secret of human evolution that from these religious attitudes toward the phenomena of the world, inspirations for the whole of life proceed.

First of all, we must understand clearly that during a certain epoch, during the Middle Ages, the people who oriented the spiritual life were priests, and those priests were concerned above all with the ordering of the festivals. They set the tone for the celebration of the festivals. The priesthood was that group of men who presented the festivals before the rest of mankind, before the laity, and who gave the festivals their content. In so doing the priests themselves felt this content very deeply; and the entire soul-condition that resulted from the inspiring effect of the festivals was expressed in the rest of the soul-life.

The Middle Ages would not have produced what is called Scholasticism—the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus and the other Scholastics—if this philosophy, this world conception, with all its social consequences, had not been inspired by the most important thought of the Church, by the Easter thought. In the vision of the descending Christ, Who lives for a time in man on Earth and then goes through the Resurrection, that soul impulse was given which led to the particular relation between faith and science, between knowledge and revelation which was agreed upon by the Scholastics. That out of man himself, only knowledge of the sensible world can be acquired, whereas everything connected with the super-sensible world has to be gained through revelation—this was determined basically by the way the Easter thought followed upon the Christmas thought.

And if, in turn, the idea-world of natural science today is totally the product of Scholasticism, as I have often explained to you, we must then say: “Although the natural science of the present is not aware of it, its knowledge is essentially a direct imprint of the Easter thought which prevailed in the early Middle Ages and then became paralyzed in the later Middle Ages and in modern times.” Notice the way natural science applies in its ideas what is so popular today and indeed dominates our culture: it devotes its ideas entirely to dead nature; it considers itself incapable of rising above dead nature. This is a result of that inspiration which was stimulated by viewing the Laying in the Grave.

As long as people were able to add the Resurrection to the Entombment as something to which they looked up, they then added also the revelation concerning the super-sensible to mere outer sense-knowledge. But as it became more and more common to view the Resurrection as an inexplicable and therefore unjustifiable miracle, revelation—that is, the super-sensible world—came to be repudiated. The present-day natural scientific view is inspired solely by the conception of Good Friday and lacks any conception of Easter Sunday.

We need to recognize this inner connection: The inspired element is always that which is experienced within all the festival moods in relation to Nature. We must come to know the connection between this inspiring element and all that comes to expression in human life. When we once gain an insight into the intimate connection that exists between this living-oneself-into the course of the year and what men think, feel, and will, then we shall also recognize how significant it would be if we were to succeed, for example, in making the Michael festival in autumn a reality; if we were really to succeed, out of spiritual foundations, out of esoteric foundations, in making the autumn Michael festival something that would pass over into men's consciousness and again work inspiringly.

If the Easter thought were to receive its coloration through the fact that to the Easter thought “He has been laid in the grave and is arisen” the other thought is added, the human thought, “He is arisen and may be laid in the grave without perishing”—If this Michael thought could become living, what tremendous significance just such an event could have for men's whole perceiving (Empfindung), and feeling and willing—and how this could “live itself into” the whole social structure of mankind!

My dear friends, all that people are hoping for from a renewal of the social life will not come about from all the discussions and all the institutions based on what is externally sensible. It will be able to come about only when a mighty inspiration-thought goes through mankind, when an inspiration-thought takes hold of mankind through which the moral-spiritual element will once again be felt and perceived along with the natural-sensible element.

People today are like earthworms, I might say, looking for sunlight under the ground, while to find the sunlight they need to come forth above the surface of the earth. Nothing in reality will be accomplished by all of today's organizations and plans for reform; something can be achieved only by the mighty impact of a thought-impulse drawn out of the spirit. For it must be clear to us that the Easter thought itself can only attain its new “nuance” through being complemented by the Michael thought.

Let us consider this Michael thought somewhat more closely. If we look at the Easter thought, we have to consider that Easter occurs at the time of the bursting and sprouting life of spring. At this time the Earth is breathing out her soul-forces, in order that these soul-forces may be permeated again by the astral element surrounding the Earth, the extra-earthly, cosmic element. The Earth is breathing out her soul. What does this mean?

It means that certain elemental beings which are just as much in the periphery of the Earth as the air is or as the forces of growth are—that these unite their own being with the out-breathed Earth soul in those regions in which it is spring. These beings float and merge with the out-breathed Earth soul. They become dis-individualized; they lose their individuality and rise in the general earthly soul element. We see countless elemental beings in spring just around Easter time in the final stage of the individual life which was theirs during the winter. We see them merging into the general earth soul element and rising like a sort of cloud (red, yellow, with green). I might say that during the wintertime these elemental beings are within the soul element of the Earth, where they had become individualized; before this Easter time they had a certain individuality, flying and floating about as individual beings. During Easter time we see them come together in a general cloud (red), and form a common mass within the Earth soul (green). But by so doing these elemental beings lose their consciousness to a certain degree and enter into a sort of sleeping condition. Certain animals sleep in the winter; these elemental beings sleep in summer. This sleep is deepest during St. John's time, when they are completely asleep. Then they begin once more to individualize, and when the Earth breathes in again at Michaelmas, at the end of September, we can see them already as separate beings again.

Man needs these elemental beings... This is not in his consciousness, but man needs them nonetheless, in order to unite them with himself, so that he can prepare his future. And man could unite these elemental beings with himself, if at a certain festival time—it would have to be at the end of September—he could perceive with a special inner soul-filled liveliness how Nature herself changes toward the autumn; if he could perceive how the animal and plant life recedes, how certain animals begin to seek their shelters against the winter; how the plant leaves get their autumn coloring; how all Nature fades and withers.

It is true that spring is fair, and it is a fine capacity of the human soul to perceive the beauty of the spring, the growing, sprouting, burgeoning life. But to be able to perceive also when the leaves fade and take on their fall coloring, when the animals creep away—to be able to feel how in the sensible which is dying away, the gleaming, shining, soul-spiritual element arises—to be able to perceive how with the yellowing of the leaves there is a descent of the springing and sprouting life, but how the sensible becomes yellow in order that the spiritual can live in the yellowing as such—to be able to perceive how in the falling of the leaves the ascent of the spirit takes place, how the spiritual is the counter-manifestation of the fading sense-perceptible; this should as a perceptive feeling for the spirit—ensoul the human being in autumn! Then he would prepare himself in the right way precisely for Christmastide.

Man should become permeated, out of anthroposophical spiritual science, by the truth that it is precisely the spiritual life of man on Earth which depends on the declining physical life. Whenever we think, the physical matter in our nerves is destroyed; the thought struggles up out of the matter as it perishes. To feel the becoming of the thought in one's self, the gleaming up of the idea in the human soul, in the whole human organism of man to be akin to the yellowing leaves, the withering foliage, the drying and shriveling of the plant world in Nature; to feel the kinship of man's spiritual “being-ness” with Nature's spiritual “being-ness”—this can give man that impulse which strengthens his will, that impulse which points man to the permeation of his will with spirituality.

In so doing, however, in permeating his will with spirituality, the human being becomes an associate of the Michael activity on earth. And when man lives with Nature in this way as autumn approaches and brings this living-with-Nature to expression in an appropriate festival content, then he will be able truly to perceive the completing (Erganzung) of the Easter mood. But by means of this, something else will become clear to him.—You see, what man thinks, feels, and wills today is really inspired by the Easter mood, which is actually one-sided. This Easter mood is essentially a result of the sprouting, burgeoning life, which causes everything to merge as in a pantheistic unity. Man is surrendered to the unity of Nature, and to the unity of the world generally. This is also the structure of our spiritual life today. Man wants everything to revert to a unity, to a monon; he is either a devotee of universal spirit or universal nature; and he is accordingly either a spiritualistic Monist or a materialistic Monist. Everything is included in an indefinite unity. This is essentially the spring mood.

But when we look into the autumn mood, with the rising and becoming free of the spiritual, and the dropping away and withering of the sensible (red), then we have a view of the spiritual as such, and the sensible as such.

The sprouting plant in the spring has the spiritual within its sprouting and growing; the spiritual is mingled with the sensible; we have essentially a unity. The withering plant lets the leaf fall, and the spirit rises; we have the spirit, the invisible, super-sensible spirit, and the material falling out of it. I would say that it is just as if we had in a container, first, a uniform fluid in which something is dissolved, and then by some process we should cause this to separate from the fluid and fall to the bottom as sediment. We have now separated the two which were united, which had formed a unity.

The spring tends to weave everything together, to blend everything into a vague, undifferentiated unity. The view of the autumn, if we only look at it in the right way, if we contrast it in the right way with the view of the spring, calls attention to the way the spiritual works on the one side and the physical-material on the other. The Easter thought loses nothing of value if the Michaelmas thought is added to it. We have on the one side the Easter thought, where everything appears—I might say—as a pantheistic mixture, a unity. Then we have what is differentiated; but the differentiation does not occur in any irregular, chaotic fashion. We have regularity throughout.

Think of the cyclic course: joining together, intermingling, unifying; an intermediate state when the differentiating takes place; the complete differentiation; then again the merging of what was differentiated within the uniform, and so forth. There you see always besides these two conditions yet a third: you see the rhythm between the differentiated and the undifferentiated, in a certain way, between the in-breathing of what was differentiated-out and the out-breathing again, an intermediate condition. You see a rhythm: a physical-material, a spiritual, a working-in-each-other of the physical-material and the spiritual: a soul element.

But the important thing is this: not to stop with the common human fancy that everything must be led back to a unity; thereby everything, whether the unity is a spiritual or a material one, is led back to the indefiniteness of the cosmic night. In the night all cows are gray; in spiritual Monism all ideas are gray; in material Monism they are likewise gray. These are only distinctions of perceiving; they are of no concern for a higher view. What matters is this: that we as human beings can so unite ourselves with the cosmic course that we are in a position to follow the living transition from the unity into the trinity, the return from trinity into unity. When, by complementing the Easter thought with the Michael thought in this way we have become able to perceive rightly the primordial trinity in all existence, then we shall take it into our whole attitude of soul. Then we shall be in a position to understand that actually all life depends upon the activity and the interworking of primordial trinities. And when we have the Michael festival inspiring such a view in the same way that the one-sided Easter festival inspired the view now existing, then we shall have an inspiration, a Nature/Spirit impulse, to introduce threefoldness, the impulse of threefoldness into all the observing and forming of life. And it depends finally and only upon the introduction of this impulse, whether the destructive forces in human evolution can be transformed once more into ascending forces.

One might say that when we spoke of the threefold impulse it was in a certain sense a test of whether the Michael thought is already strong enough so that it can be felt how such an impulse flows directly out of the forces that shape the time. It was a test of the human soul, of whether the Michael thought is strong enough as yet in a large number of people. Well, the test yielded a negative result. The Michael thought is not strong enough in even a small number of people for it to be perceived truly in all its time-shaping power and forcefulness. And it will indeed hardly be possible, for the sake of new forces of ascent, to unite human souls with the original formative cosmic forces in the way that is necessary, unless such an inspiring force as can permeate a Michael festival—unless, that is to say, a new formative impulse—can come forth from the depths of the esoteric life.

If instead of the passive members of the Anthroposophical Society, even only a few active members could be found, then it would become possible to set up further deliberations to consider such a thought. It is essential to the Anthroposophical Society that while stimuli within the Society should of course be carried out, the members should actually attach primary value, I might say, to participating in what is coming to pass. They may perhaps focus the contemplative forces of their souls on what is taking place, but the activity of their own souls does not become united with what is passing through the time as an impulse. Hence, with the present state of the Anthroposophical Movement, there can of course be no question of considering as part of its activity anything like what has just now been spoken of as an esoteric impulse. But it must be understood how mankind's evolution really moves, that the great sustaining forces of humanity's world-evolution come not from what is propounded in superficial words, but from entirely different quarters.

This has always been known in ancient times from primeval elementary clairvoyance. In ancient times it was not the custom for the young people to learn, for example, that there are so and so many chemical elements; then another is discovered and there are then 75, then 76; another is discovered and there are 77. One cannot anticipate how many may still be discovered. Accidentally, one is added to 75, to 76, and so on. In what is adduced here as number, there is no inner reality. And so it is everywhere. Who is interested today in anything that would bring to revelation, let us say, that a systematic threefoldness or trinity prevails in plants! Order after order is discovered, species after species; and they are counted just as though one were counting a chance pile of sticks or stones. But the working of number in the world rests on a real quality of being, and this quality must be fathomed. Only think how short a time lies behind us since knowledge of substance was led back to the trinity of the salty, the mercurial, and the phosphoric; how in this a trinity of archetypal forces was seen; how everything that appeared as individual had to be fitted into one or another of the three archetypal forces.

And it is different again when we look back into still earlier times in which it was easier for people to come to something like this because of the very situation of their culture; for the Oriental cultures lay nearer to the Torrid Zone, where such things were more readily accessible to the ancient elementary clairvoyance. Today, however, it is possible to come to these things in the Temperate Zone through free, exact clairvoyance.... Yet people want to go back to the ancient cultures! In those days people did not distinguish spring, summer, autumn, winter. To distinguish spring, summer, autumn, winter leads us to a mere succession because it contains the “four.” It would have been quite impossible for the ancient Indian culture, for example, to think of something like the course of the year as ruled by the four, because this contains nothing of the archetypal forms underlying all activity.

When I wrote my book, Theosophy, it was impossible simply to list in succession physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego, although we can summarize it this way once the matter is before us, once it is inwardly understood. I had therefore to arrange them according to the number three: physical body, ether body, astral body, forming the first trinity. Then comes the trinity interwoven with it: sentient soul, intellectual soul, consciousness soul; then the trinity interwoven with this: spirit self, life spirit, spirit man—three times three interwoven with one another in such a way as to become seven.

Only when we look at the present stage of mankind's evolution does the four appear, which is really a secondary number. If we want to see the inwardly active principle, if we want to see the formative process, we must see forming and shaping as associated with threefoldness, with trinity.

Hence, the ancient Indian view was of a year divided into a hot season, which would approximate our months of April, May, June, July; a wet season, comprising approximately our months, August, September, October, November; and a cold season, which would include our months, December, January, February, March. The boundaries do not need to be rigidly fixed according to the months but are only approximate; they can be thought of as shifting. But the course of the year was thought of according to the principle of the “three.”

And thus man's whole state of soul would be imbued with the predisposition to observe this primal trinity in all weaving and working, and hence to interweave it also into all human creating and shaping. We can even say that it is only possible to have true ideas of the free spiritual life, the life of rights, the social-economic life, when we perceive in the depths this triple pulse of cosmic activity, which must also permeate human activity.

Any reference to this sort of thing today is regarded as some sort of superstition, whereas it is considered great wisdom simply to count “one” and again “one,” “two,” “three,” and so on. But Nature does not take such a course. If we look, however, only at a realm in which everything is woven together, as is the case with Nature in springtime—which of course we must look at if we want to observe the interweaving of things—then we can never restore the pulse of three.

But when anyone follows the whole course of the year, when he sees how the “three” is organized, how the spiritual and the physical-material life are present as a duality, and the rhythmic interweaving of the two as the third, then he perceives this three-in-one, one-in-three, and learns to know how the human being can place himself in this cosmic activity: three to one, one to three.

It would become the whole disposition of the human soul to permeate the cosmos, to unite itself with cosmic worlds, if once the Michael thought could awaken as a festival thought in such a way that we were to place a Michael festival in the second half of September alongside the Easter festival; if to the thought of the resurrection of the God after death could be added the thought, produced by the Michael force, of the resurrection of man from death, so that man through the Resurrection of Christ would find the force to die in Christ. This means, taking the risen Christ into one's soul during earthly life, so as to be able to die in Him—that is, to be able to die, not at death but when one is living.

Such an inner consciousness as this would result from the inspiring element that would come from a Michael service. We can realize full well how far removed from any such idea is our materialistic time, which is also a time grown narrow-minded and pedantic. Of course, nothing can be expected of us, so long as it remains dead and abstract. But if with the same enthusiasm with which festivals were once introduced in the world when people had the force to form festivals,—if such a thing happens again, then it will work inspiringly. Indeed it will work inspiringly for our whole spiritual and our whole social life. Then that which we need will be present in life: not abstract spirit on one hand and spirit-void nature on the other, but Nature permeated with spirit, and spirit forming and shaping naturally. For these are one, and they will once again weave religion, science, and art into oneness, because they will understand how to conceive the trinity in religion, science, and art in the sense of the Michael thought, so that these three can then be united in the right way in the Easter thought, in the anthroposophical shaping and forming. This can work religiously, artistically, cognitionally, and can also differentiate religiously, cognitionally. Then the anthroposophical impulse would consist in perceiving in the Easter season the unity of science, religion, and art; and then at Michaelmas perceiving how the three—who have one mother, the Easter mother—how the three become “sisters” and stand side by side, but mutually complement one another. Then the Michael thought which should become living as a festival in the course of the year, would be able to work inspiringly on all domains of human life.

With such things as these, which belong to the truly esoteric, we should permeate ourselves, at least in our cognition, to begin with. If then the time could come when there are actively working personalities, such a thing could actually become an impulse which singly and alone would be able, in the present condition of humanity, to replace the descending forces with ascending ones.

The object of the lectures I gave here immediately before Christmas was to indicate man's connection with the whole Cosmos and especially with the forces of spirit-and-soul pervading the Cosmos. Today I shall again be dealing with the subject-matter of those lectures but in a way that will constitute an entirely independent study.

The life of man, as far as it consists of experiences of outer Nature as well as of the inner life of soul and spirit, lies between two poles; and many of the thoughts which necessarily come to man about his connection with the world are influenced by the realization that these two polar opposites exist.

On the one side, man's life of thinking and feeling is confronted by what is called ‘natural necessity.’ He feels himself dependent upon adamantine laws which he finds everywhere in the world outside him and which also penetrate through him, inasmuch as his physical and also his etheric organisms are part and parcel of this outer world. On the other hand, he is deeply sensible—it is a feeling that is bound to arise in every healthy-minded person—that his dignity as man would not be fully attained if freedom were not an integral element in his life between birth and death. Necessity and freedom are the polar opposites in his life.

You are aware that in the age of natural science—the subject with which I am dealing in another course of lectures¹ here there is a strong tendency to extend the sway of necessity that is everywhere in evidence in external Nature, to whatever originates in the human being himself, and many representative scientists have come to regard freedom as an impossibility, an illusion that exists only in the human soul, because when a man is faced with having to make a decision, reasons for and reasons against it work upon him. These reasons themselves are, however, under the sway of necessity; hence—so say these scientists—it is really not the man who makes the decision but whatever reasons are the more numerous and the weightier. They triumph over the other less numerous and less weighty reasons, which also affect him. Man is therefore carried along helplessly by the victors in the struggle between impulses that work upon him of necessity. Many representatives of this way of thinking have said that a man believes himself to be free only because the polarically opposite reasons for and against any decision he may be called upon to make, present such complications in their totality that he does not notice how he is being tossed hither and thither; one category of reasons finally triumphs; one scale in a delicately poised balance is weighed down and he is carried along in accordance with it.

Against this argument there is not only the ethical consideration that the dignity of man would not be maintained in a world where he was merely a plaything of conflicting yes-and-no impulses, but there is also this fact, that the feeling of freedom in the human will is so strong that an unbiased person has no sort of doubt that if he can be misled as to its existence, he can equally well be misled by the most elementary sense-perceptions. If the elementary experience of freedom in the sphere of feeling could prove to be deceptive, so too could the experience of red, for instance, or of C or C sharp and so on. Many representatives of modern natural scientific thought place such a high value upon theory that they allow the theory of a natural necessity which is absolute, has no exceptions and embraces human actions and human will, to tempt them into disregarding altogether an experience such as the sense of freedom!

But this problem of necessity and freedom, with all the phenomena associated with it in the life of soul—and these phenomena are very varied and numerous—is a problem linked with much more profound aspects of universal existence than are accessible to natural science or to the everyday experience of the human soul. For at a time when man's outlook was quite different from what it is today, this disquieting, perplexing problem was already a concern of his soul.

You will have gathered from the other course of lectures now being given here that the natural scientific thinking of the modern age is by no means so very old. When we go back to earlier times we find views of the world that were as one-sidedly spiritual as they have become one-sidedly naturalistic today. The farther back we go, the less of what is called ‘necessity’ do we find in man's thinking. Even in early Greek thought there was nothing of what we today call necessity, for the Greek idea of necessity had an essentially different meaning. But if we go still farther back we find, instead of necessity, the working of forces, and these, in their whole compass, were ascribed to a divine-spiritual Providence. Expressing myself rather colloquially, I would say that to a modern scientific thinker, the Nature-forces do everything; whereas the thinker of olden times conceived of everything being done by spiritual forces working with purposes and aims as man himself does, only with purposes far more comprehensive than those of man could ever be. Yet even with this view of the world, entirely spiritual as it was, man turned his attention to the way in which his will was subject to divine-spiritual forces; and just as today, when his thinking is in line with natural science he feels himself subject to the forces and laws of Nature, so in those ancient times he felt himself subject to divine-spiritual forces and laws. And for many who in those days were determinists in this sense, human freedom, although it is a direct experience of the soul, was no more valid than it is for our modern naturalists. These modern naturalists believe that necessity works through the actions of men; the men of olden times thought that divine-spiritual forces, in accordance with their purposes, work through human actions.

It is only necessary to recognize that the problem of freedom and necessity exists in these two completely opposite worlds of thought to realize that quite certainly no examination of the surface-aspect of conditions and happenings can lead to any solution of this problem which penetrates so deeply into all life and into all evolution.

We must look more deeply into the process of world-evolution—world-evolution as the course of Nature on the one side and as the unfolding of spirit on the other—before it is possible to grasp the whole meaning and implications of a problem as vital as this; insight can indeed only come from anthroposophical thinking.

The course of Nature is usually studied in an extremely restricted way. Isolated happenings and processes of a highly specialized kind are studied in the laboratories, brought within the range of telescopes or subjected to experiment. This means that observation of the course of Nature and of world-evolution is confined within very narrow limits. And those who study the domain of soul and spirit imitate the scientists and naturalists. They fight shy of taking into account the whole man when they are considering his life of soul. Instead of this they specialize in order to accentuate some particular thought or sentient experience with important bearings, and hope in this way eventually to build up a psychology, just as efforts are made to build up a body of knowledge of the physical world out of single observations and experiments conducted in chemical and physical laboratories, in clinics and so forth.

Yet in reality these studies never lead to any comprehensive understanding either of the physical world or of the world of soul-and-spirit. As little as it is the intention here to disparage the justification of these specialized investigations—for they are justified from points of view often referred to in my lectures—as strongly it must be emphasized that unless the world itself, unless Nature herself reveals to man somewhere or other what results from the interworking of the details, he will never be able to build up from his single observations and experiments a picture of the structure of the world that is confirmed by the actual happenings. Liver cells and minute activities of the liver, brain-cells and minute cerebral processes can be investigated and greater and greater specialization may take place in these domains; but these investigations, because they lead to particularization and not to the whole, will give no help towards forming a view of the human organism in its totality, unless from the very beginning a man has a comprehensive, intuitive idea of this totality to help him in forming the separate investigations into a unified whole. In like manner, as long as chemistry, astro-chemistry, physics, astro-physics, biology, restrict themselves to the investigation of isolated details, they will never be able to give a picture of how the different forces and laws in our world-environment work together to form a whole, unless man develops the faculty of perceiving in Nature outside something similar to what can be seen as the totality of the human organism, in which all the separate processes of liver, kidneys, hearts, brain, and so forth, are included. In other words, we must be able to point to something in the universe in which all the forces we behold in our environment work together to form a self-contained whole.

Now it may be that certain processes in the human liver and human brain will not for a long time to come be detected with enough accuracy to be accepted by biology. But at all events, as long as men have been able to look at other men, they have always said: The processes of liver, stomach, heart, etc. work together within the boundary of the skin to form a whole. Without being obliged to look at each and all of the separate details, we have before us the sum-total of the chemical, physical and biological processes belonging to man's nature.

Is it possible also to have before us as a complete whole the sum-total of the forces and laws of Nature that are at work around us? In a certain way it is possible. But in order not to be misunderstood I must emphasize the fact that such totalities are always relative. For instance, we can group together the processes of the outer ear and then have a relative whole. But we can also group together the processes in that part of the organ of hearing which continues on to the brain and then we have another relative whole; taking the two groups together, we have another, greater whole, which in turn belongs to the head, and this again to the whole organism. And it will be just the same when we try to comprehend in one complete picture the laws and forces that come primarily into consideration for man.

A first complete whole of this kind is the cycle of day and night. Paradoxical as this seems at first hearing, in this cycle of day and night a number of natural laws around us are gathered together into one whole. During the course of a day and night, processes are going on in our environment and penetrating through us which, if separated out, prove to be physical and chemical processes of every possible different kind. We can say: The cycle of the day is a time-organism, a time-organism embracing a number of natural processes which can be studied individually.

A greater ‘totality’ is the course of the year. If we review all the changes which affect the earth and mankind during the course of the year in the sphere surrounding us—in the atmosphere, for example—we shall find that all the processes taking place in the plants and also in the minerals from one Spring to the next, form in their time-sequence an organic whole, although otherwise they reveal themselves to us and also to different scientific investigations as separate phenomena. They form a whole, just as the processes taking place in the liver, kidneys, spleen and so forth form a whole in the human organism. The course of the year is actually an organic whole—the expression is not quite exact but words of some kind have to be used—the year is an organic sum-total of occurrences and facts which it is customary in natural science to investigate singly.

Speaking in what sounds a rather trivial way, but you will realize that the meaning is very profound, we might say: if man is to avoid having to surrounding Nature the very abstract relationship he adopts to descriptions of chemical and physical experiments, or to what is often taught today in botany and zoology, the time-organisms of the course of the day and the course of the year must become realities for him—realities of cosmic existence. He will then find in them a certain kinship with his own constitution.

Let us begin by thinking of the cycle of the year. Reviewing it as we did in the lecture before Christmas, we find a whole series of processes in the sprouting, growing plants which first produce leaves and, later on, blossoms. An incalculable number of natural processes reveal themselves from the life in the root, on into the life in the green leaves and in the colored petals. And we have an altogether different kind of process before us when we see, in Autumn, the fading, withering and dying of outer Nature.

The cosmic happenings around us form an organic unity. In Summer we see how the Earth opens out all her organs to the Cosmos and how her life and activities rise towards the cosmic expanse. This applies not only to the plant world but to the animal world too in a certain sense—especially to the lower animals. Think of all the activity in the insect world during the Summer, how this activity seems to rise up from the Earth and is given over to the Cosmos, especially to the forces coming from the Sun. During Autumn and Winter we see how everything that from the time of Spring onwards reached out towards the cosmic expanse, falls back again into the earthly realm, how the Earth as it were gradually increases her hold upon all growing life, brings it to the stage of apparent death, or at least to a state of sleep—how the Earth closes all her organs against the influences of the Cosmos. Here we have two contrasting processes in the course of the year, embracing countless details but nevertheless representing a complete whole.

If with the eyes of the soul we contemplate this yearly cycle, which can be regarded as a complete whole because from a certain point it simply repeats itself, recurring in approximately the same way, we find in it nothing else than Nature-necessity. And in our own earthly lives we human beings follow this Nature-necessity. If our lives followed it entirely we should be completely under its domination. Now it is certainly true that those forces of Nature which come especially into consideration for us as Earth-dwellers are present in the course of the year; for the Earth does not change so quickly that the minute changes taking place from year to year make themselves noticeable during a man's life, however old he may live to be.—So by living each year through Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, we partake with our own bodies in Nature-necessity.

It is important to think in this way, for it is only actual experience that gives knowledge; no theory ever does so. Every theory starts from some special domain and then proceeds to generalize. True knowledge can only be acquired when we start from life and from experience. We must not therefore consider the laws of gravity by themselves, or the laws of plant life, or the laws of animal instinct, or the laws of mental coercion, because if we do, we think only of their details, generalize them, and then arrive at entirely false conclusions. We must have in mind where the Nature-forces are revealed in their cooperation and mutual interaction—and that is in the cyclic course of the year.

Now even supervisial study shows that man is relatively free in his relation to the course of the year, but Anthroposophy shows this even more clearly. In Anthroposophy we turn our attention to the two alternating conditions in which every human being lives during the 24 hours of the day, namely, the sleeping state and the waking state. We know that during the waking state the physical, etheric and astral bodies and the Ego-organism form a relative unity in the human being. In the sleeping state the physical and etheric bodies remain behind in the bed, closely interwoven, and the Ego and the astral body are outside the physical and etheric bodies.

If with the means provided by anthroposophical research—of which you will have read in our literature—we study the physical and etheric bodies of man during sleep and during waking life, the following comes to light. When the Ego and the astral body are outside the physical and etheric organism during sleep, a kind of life begins in the latter which is to be found in external Nature in the mineral and plant kingdoms only. And the reason why the physical and etheric organisms of man do not gradually pass over into a sum-total of plant or mineral processes is simply due to the fact that the Ego and astral body are within them for certain periods. If the return of the Ego and astral body were too long delayed, the physical and etheric bodies would pass over into a mineral and vegetative form of life. As it is, a tendency to become vegetative and mineralized commences in man after he falls asleep, and this tendency has the upper hand during sleeping life.

If with the insight afforded by anthroposophical research, we contemplate the human being while he is asleep, we see in him—of course with the inevitable variations—a faithful copy of what the Earth is throughout Spring and Summer. Mineral and vegetative life begins to bud in him, although naturally in quite a different way from what happens in the green plants which grow out of the Earth. Nevertheless, with one variation, what goes on during sleep in the physical and etheric organism of man is a faithful image of the period of Spring and Summer on the Earth. In this respect, the organism of man of the present epoch is in tune with external Nature. His physical eyes can survey it. He beholds its sprouting, budding life. As soon as he attains to Inspiration and Imagination, a picture of Summer is revealed to him when physical man is asleep. In sleep, Spring and Summer are there for the physical and etheric bodies of man. A budding, sprouting life begins. And when we wake, when the Ego and astral body returns, all this budding life in the physical and etheric bodies withdraws and for the eye of seership, life in the physical and etheric organism begins to be very similar to the life of the Earth during Autumn and Winter. When we follow the human being through one complete period of sleeping and waking life, we have before us in miniature an actual microcosmic reflection of Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. If we follow man's physical and etheric organism through a period of 24 hours, contemplating it in the light of Spiritual Science, we pass, in the microcosmic sense, through the course of a year. Accordingly, if we consider only that part of man which remains behind in the bed when he is asleep or moves around when he is awake during the day, we can say that the course of the year is completed microcosmically in him.

But now let us consider the other part of man's being which releases itself in sleep—the Ego and astral body. If again we use the kinds of knowledge available in spiritual investigation, namely Inspiration and Intuition, we shall find that the Ego and astral body are given over while man is asleep to spiritual Powers within which they will not, in the normal condition, be able to live consciously until a later epoch of the Earth's existence. From the time of going to sleep until the time of waking, the Ego and astral body are withdrawn from the world just as the Earth is withdrawn from the Cosmos during Winter. During sleep, Ego and astral body are actually in their Winter period. So that in the being of man during sleep there is an intermingling of conditions which are only present at one and the same time on opposite hemispheres of the Earth's surface; for during sleep man's physical and etheric bodies have their Summer and his Ego and astral body their Winter.

During waking life, conditions are reversed. The physical and etheric organism is then in its Winter period. The Ego and astral body are given over to what can stream from the Cosmos to man in his waking state. So when the Ego and astral body come down into the physical and etheric organism, they (i.e. Ego and astral body) have their Summer period. Once more we have the two seasons side by side, but now Winter in the physical and etheric organism, Summer in the Ego and astral body.

On the Earth, Summer and Winter cannot be intermingled. But in man, the microcosm, Summer and Winter intermingle all the time. When man is asleep his physical Summer mingles with spiritual Winter; when he is awake his physical Winter mingles with spiritual Summer. In external Nature, Summer and Winter are separated in the course of the year. In man, Summer and Winter mingle all the time from two different directions. In external Nature on Earth, Winter and Summer follow one another in time. In the human being, Winter and Summer are simultaneous, only they interchange, so that at one time there is Spirit-Summer together with Body-Winter (waking life), and at another, Spirit-Winter together with Body-Summer (sleeping life).

Thus the laws and forces in external Nature around us cannot neutralize each other in any one region of the Earth, because they work in sequence, the one after the other in time; but in man they do neutralize each other. The course of Nature is such that just as through two opposing forces a state of rest can be brought about, so can an untold number of natural laws neutralize and cancel out each other. This happens in the human being with respect to all laws of external Nature, inasmuch as he sleeps and wakes in the regular way. The two conditions which appear as Nature-necessity only when they succeed each other in time, are coincident and consequently neutralized in man—and it is this that makes him a free being.

Freedom can never be understood until it is realized how the Summer and Winter forces of man's spiritual life can neutralize the Summer and Winter forces of his outer physical and etheric nature.

External Nature presents to us pictures which we must not see in ourselves, either in the waking or in the sleeping state. On no account must this happen. On the contrary, we must say that these pictures of the course and order of Nature lose their validity within the constitution of man, and we must turn our gaze elsewhere. For when the course of Nature within the human being no longer disturbs us, it becomes possible for the first time to gaze at man's spiritual, moral and psychic make-up. And then we begin to have an ethical and moral relationship to him, just as we have a corresponding relationship to Nature.

When we contemplate our own being with the aid of knowledge acquired in this way, we find, telescoped into one another, conditions which in the external world are spread across the stream of time. And there are many other things of which the same could be said. If we contemplate our inner being and understand it rightly in the sense I have indicated today, we bring it into a relationship with the course of time different from the one to which we are accustomed today.

The purely external mode of scientific observation does not reach the stage where the investigator can say: In the being of man you must hear sounding together what can only be heard as separate tones in the flow of Time.—But if you develop spiritual hearing, the tones of Summer and Winter can be heard ringing simultaneously in man, and they are the same tones that we hear in the outer world when we enter into the flow of Time itself. Time becomes Space. The whole surrounding universe also resounds to us in Time: expanded widely in Space, there ring forth what resounds from our own being as from a centre, gathered as it were, in a single point.

This is the moment, my dear friends, when scientific study and contemplation becomes artistic study and contemplation: when art and science no longer stand in stark contrast as they do in our naturalistic age, but when they are interrelated in the way sensed by Goethe when he said that art reveal; those secrets of Nature without which we can never fully understand her. From a certain point onwards it is imperative that we should understand the form and structure of the world as artistic creation. And once we have taken the path from the purely scientific conception of the world to artistic understanding, we shall also be ready to take the third step, which leads to a deepening of religious experience.

When we have found the physical forces and the forces of soul-and-spirit working together in the inner centre of our being, we can also behold them in the Cosmos. Human willing rises to the level of artistic creative power and finally achieves a relationship to the world that is not merely passive knowledge but positive, active surrender. Man no longer looks at the world abstractly, with the forces of his head, but his vision becomes more and more an activity of his whole being. Living together with the course of cosmic existence becomes a happening different in character from his connection with the facts and events of everyday life. It becomes a ritual, a cult, and the cosmic ritual comes into being in which man can have his place at every moment of his life. Every earthly cult and ritual is a symbolic image of this cosmic cult and ritual—which is higher and more sublime than all earthly cults.

If what has been said today has been thoroughly grasped, it will be possible to study the relationship of the anthroposophical outlook to any particular religious cult. And this will be done during the next few days, when we shall consider the relationship between Anthroposophy and different forms of cult.

• 1. The Birth of Natural Science in World-History and Its Subsequent Development. Course of 9 lectures given at Dornach from 24th December, 1922 to 6th January, 1923.