The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Translated by Steiner Online Library

Yesterday I pointed out to you how the fact of Jesus' birth has only gradually conquered the hearts and souls of men, and how the Christmas play, as we have been able to let it affect us, has basically only gradually developed into this noble and beautiful form and at the same time with all the spirit of consecration with which it had been imbued during the times in which it had flourished. Basically, one can say of the first forms of this Christmas play: People were trying, out of a completely profane mood, to take part in what the people had seen for centuries in a way that was incomprehensible to them. The Christ Child only gradually won the hearts of the people. And it even took quite a long time to win the hearts of humanity. When we see in the 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th centuries that what the priests had gradually done was to involve the people, then this involvement is, as I indicated to you yesterday, not yet of the noble form that these Christmas plays had later, of which we have just seen two examples.

But I tried to make you aware that these two games are quite different in origin, and that this is clearly visible. The first game has something simple and folksy about it, so that you can see that the main thing in this game is to The main thing about it is to show how the child, in whom the great world spirit was later embodied and worked within earthly existence, how this child entered the world, how it was received on the one hand by the hosts, the two innkeepers, and on the other hand by the shepherds. And basically, this Christmas play, the first one we saw yesterday, shows very clearly how different the reception was with the innkeepers and with the shepherds. That is what particularly stands out for us.

The other Christmas play is quite different. There we are led straight to the fact that wise men – who at that time were wise kings for the peoples involved – read in the stars about the significant fate that awaits humanity. So we see occult ancient wisdom poured out into the action of the play at the same time. And then, as the story unfolds, we see how the being who now, in the sense of this occult wisdom, this wisdom divined from the stars, enters into earthly events, is confronted by the one at whose side we clearly see evil, the retarded principle, the devilish, the Ahrimanic-Luciferic principle — Herod. We see how the Christ principle and the Luciferic-Ahrimanic principle are set against each other. But we also see how that which is revealed out of spiritual spheres asserts itself in the course of events. As if proclaiming that they are guiding us from spiritual spheres, the angels appear and guide and direct the events so that what Herod wills does not come to pass, but something else happens. Human beings are permeated in their will by what comes from the spiritual worlds. So we have a play that, in terms of the forces it contains, points us beyond mere earthly events.

When we consider how these two plays face each other, the one steeped in primitive folk-watching, the other steeped in a wisdom that really refers us back to an ancient wisdom of the evolution of the earth , we are led to let many thoughts arise in us about what has happened in the course of time and what is connected with the full significance of the Mystery of Golgotha for the evolution of the earth. Let us consider that at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha took place, in a broader sense, there was a deep, profound wisdom in certain circles about spiritual matters. This wisdom is called Gnosis. In the outer world, in the progress of European spiritual culture, one can positively say that this gnosis, this gnostic science of the secrets of the spiritual world, had disappeared within European culture for the outer world. In the third, fourth, fifth and sixth centuries, within spiritual life, there was really still very little awareness of what this science contained. Those who knew something – I mean those who knew what one could easily know if one was a Christian priest or a Christian scholar – knew about this gnosis because there were opponents of this gnosis in the first centuries of Christianity and these opponents fought against the gnosis. Imagine that today all the books that we consider to be our literature and all the cycles were to be eradicated, burned, so that nothing of them remained, and only what the opponents had written – and in a few centuries someone would come across these books of the opponents that remained and would have to form an idea from them of what was written in our books: That was the case with Gnosticism! |

One of the most important church writers was Irenaeus, who was a student of Bishop Polycarp of Asia Minor, who himself was a student of the apostles. But Irenaeus wrote as an opponent of Gnosticism. Over the centuries, the only way to learn what the Gnostics taught was to see what Irenaeus stated and recorded in his book in order to refute it. So everything of this ancient wisdom had to be accepted, which was caused by the fact that this wisdom had only been handed down by an opponent. You see from this that the whole development of the Occident was actually based on the fact that something that came up from the old times was eradicated, properly eradicated. Outwardly, you can simply see from this fact how new the beginning was for Western culture, which was given with the Mystery of Golgotha; how basically it began with something completely new everywhere. I would say that just as a buried city is buried in the ground, so the ancient literature was buried for that which emerged from the ancient church fathers through Ambrose, Augustine, Scotus Erigena and so on. A new beginning! And just as a new city rises on what appears to be new ground, so the new rose — a new city, but on ground in which the old city lay submerged, without any hint of what it had looked like. Such was the case with the development of European civilization. Hence it can also be seen that in our time, if there is to be a spiritual deepening again, it is necessary that this spiritual deepening be achieved from the original strength of human beings, that human beings themselves again find what they have not received from outside, at least within the course of European spiritual development. And – I cannot speak of this today because it would lead too far – there can be no question of the fact that, for example, obtaining Oriental documents could be a substitute for what has disappeared in the way of external documents in Western intellectual life, for the simple reason that the Oriental documents actually give something much, much more primitive than what has become of it in the world that extended over Asia Minor, North Africa, Southern Europe and even partly over Central Europe. What spiritual knowledge had developed to in the first centuries of Christian development had been thoroughly eradicated; it only survived thanks to the writings of opponents.

Now in these writings, which have been eradicated, we have not only the knowledge, the spiritual knowledge that related to the spiritual worlds, apart from the Christ, but in these writings the application of all the old comprehensive spiritual wisdom to the mystery of Christ Jesus has also been lost. These Gnostics wanted to understand in their own way – if we may call them that – the process of evolution on earth and the nature of the Christ. The time had not yet come to understand the matter in the way we understand it now, by drawing from the original spiritual worlds truths that need not be written down because they are directly present in the spiritual world in a living way. It was not possible to extract the knowledge of the nature of Christ Jesus in this way. This is only possible in our time. But in the older way, certain things were known about Christ in a knowledge that has really been lost. Only recently have a few scant remains been found: the Pistis Sophia writings, then the writings on the “Secret of Jeü”, which are now there as if to draw people's attention to the fact that the knowledge of Christ, which is now being sought in our way, is not as foolish as the opponents of our movement would have us believe. The Book of Jeü — little of it remains, in Coptic script, but what little there is is as if to say: Look at what is in the Gospels — it is not the only thing that filled the minds of people in the early centuries of Christianity. This book Jeü contains messages about how the Christ spoke after the resurrection, after he had gone through the mystery of Golgotha, to those who could understand him at the time, who had become his disciples. The remarkable thing is that this book Jeü - I mean the small fragment that is there - speaks about the Christ and what he is in a completely different way than even the Gospel of John. The remarkable thing is that in this book one word recurs again and again, which clearly indicates to us that it is meant to draw attention to something. And this, to which attention is to be drawn, I would like to explain in the following way. Suppose someone at that time had wanted to make clear why Christ Jesus actually entered into the development of the earth, he would have spoken like this, he would have said to those who could understand: Behold, the time is coming when men will advance in the evolution of the consciousness soul. The time is coming when men will have to comprehend the world through the outer, physical organs, through the organs that are essentially anchored in the physical body. The time is past when men had original revelations through original primitive clairvoyance. The time is past when people knew something not only by applying their physical body with its tools, but by using their etheric body independently of the physical body for knowledge. People will now only have to use their physical body as a tool. But in the future it will also be possible to know something of what has so far only been known through the etheric body. In the outer world there will only be knowledge that is tied to the physical body, which is subject to death. But knowledge about the spiritual world cannot be had through the tools that are tied to the physical body. A helper must come who kindles in people that which only the etheric body can know. Someone must come who does not kindle the dead of the physical body, but who kindles the living in man, the etheric-living, who is with the living, who is with that which is not earthly in man on earth. There must be someone who can tear out of this inert, dead physical body the mind that can understand the spiritual world, the mind that is in man and is connected to heaven – the mind that cannot be crucified by the world because it belongs to heaven, which itself crucifies the world, that is, which overcomes the world.

One must imagine that in the past, before they could see the Christ in his true essence, when they went through the mystery of Golgotha, people felt connected to the spiritual world with their etheric body in primitive clairvoyance. How the physical body has become more and more hardened and hardened and has thus become an instrument; how one had to come, precisely the Christ, to bring out the living from the inert instrument of the physical body. This is what one must imagine.

And now let us consider this book Jeû: How the Christ, after going through the Mystery of Golgotha, speaks to those who have learned to hold to Him, to hold to the wisdom contained in His words: “I have loved you and desired to give you life.” We hear it from the sentence: “and desired to give you life”; he desired to bring this inert physical body out of its inertia and to give what only the etheric body can give.

“Jesus the Living One is the knowledge of the truth.” The Living One - that is, the One who has gone through the Mystery of Golgotha - speaks, presenting Himself as the Representative of the Living One.

The text continues: “This is the book of the knowledge of the invisible God by means of the hidden mysteries,” that is, the mysteries that are hidden in man, “showing the way to the chosen essence of man, leading in silence to the life of the Father of the World, in the coming of the Redeemer, the Savior of souls, who will receive the Word of Life, which is higher than all life , in the knowledge of Jesus, the living one, who came forth from the aeon of light in the allness of the pleroma, that is, of other aeons, of all spiritual beings, in the teaching, except for which there is no other, that Jesus, the living one, taught his apostles, saying, “This is the teaching in which all knowledge rests.”

So then, we have to imagine that the Risen One, who through the mystery of Golgotha has gone, speaks to the disciples who have learned to belong to him.

“Jesus, the living one, spoke to his apostles: ‘Blessed is he who has crucified the world and has not let the world crucify him’”, who can thus grasp in man that which is not overcome by matter, by external physical matter.

“The apostles answered unanimously, saying: ‘Lord, teach us this way of crucifying the world, so that it may not crucify us, and we may perish and lose our lives.’”

Jesus, the living one, answered and said: “He who has crucified the world is he who has found my word and fulfilled it according to the will of him who sent me.”

And the apostles answered, saying: “Speak to us, Lord, that we may hear you. We have followed you with all our hearts, leaving father and mother, leaving vineyards and fields, leaving goods, leaving the glory of the outward king, and have followed you that you may teach us the life of your Father who sent you.”

And now, at this invitation of the apostles, the Christ Jesus, the Living One, responded with what He has to say to them: “Christ, the Living One, answered and said: ‘My Father's life is this, that you receive your soul out of the human being of that understanding, which is not earthly’”.

So the Living One wills that His disciples learn to understand that there is an understanding of spiritual things in man that can be torn away from the physical body, that is not earthly. When they stir this up within themselves, then they understand His word in truth.

«‹This essence of all souls, which becomes understandable through what I tell you in the course of my word. And that you perfect it and before the Archon›», before the being of this eon, this age, «‹and his persecutions›», the ahrimanic-luciferic being, «‹and his persecutions, which have no end, so that you may be saved from them. But you, my disciples, hurry to carefully receive my word within yourselves, so that you may recognize it, and that the archon of this aeon, that is, Ahriman-Lucifer, may not dispute with you because he cannot find any of his commands in me. finds his orders outside of the one who has gone through the mystery of Golgotha, “so that you yourselves, O my apostles, fulfill my word with regard to me and I myself set you free, and you become holy through the freedom that is without blemish. As the Spirit of the Holy Spirit is holy, so you too will become holy through the freedom of the spiritual, the Holy Spirit.”

And all the apostles answered with one accord, Matthew and John, Philip and Bartholomew and James, saying: 'O Jesus, thou living one, whose goodness is spread abroad among those who have found thy wisdom and thy form in illumination , O Light, that in the light which has enlightened our hearts, we receive the light of life, O true Logos, that through Gnosis true knowledge of that which is alive has been taught to us.

Jesus, the living one, answered and said: “Blessed is the man who has recognized this and has been led down to heaven,” that is, who has become aware that there is something in him that is not connected with this earthly body, but is connected with the beings of the heavens, and who introduces what is connected with heaven in him, what is above, into earthly events below.

“Blessed is the man who has recognized this and led heaven down and carried the earth and sent it to heaven.” That which is earthly in him has connected with what is heavenly in him, so that when he goes through the gate of death, with the fruits of the earthly, through the heavenly, he can lead the earth back to heaven.

"The apostles answered, saying: 'Jesus, Thou Living One, explain to us the manner in which one leads heaven down. For we have followed thee that thou mightest teach us the true light.

And Jesus, the living one, answered and said: “The word that exists in heaven,” that is, he means what can be had as wisdom, as knowledge, independently of the physical being of the person. “The word that exists in heaven before the earth came into being, that earth which is called the world. But you, when you recognize my word, will lead heaven down, and the word will dwell in you. Heaven is the invisible word of the Father. But when you recognize this, you will lead heaven down. I will show you what it is like to send the earth to heaven so that you may recognize it; to send the earth to heaven is: the listener of the word of knowledge who has ceased to be the mind of an earth man only, but has become a heaven man, 'who has thus torn away his understanding in himself from the outer physical body, who has ceased to be an earth man and has become a heaven man. His mind has ceased to be earthly; it has become heavenly.

"That is why you will be saved from the archon of this aeon, from the Ahrimanic-Luciferic being.

They see a piece that has remained, has been rediscovered, and that could make people aware of the infinitely deep knowledge that was once associated with the secret of the Mystery of Golgotha in the first Christian centuries. Theologians in the present day usually get quite angry when one wants to draw attention to these or other similar writings. That they exist, they admit, certainly. Outwardly, historically, they treat them and publish editions of them. But they are convinced, these normal 'theologians of the present', that these writings have been forgotten to a certain extent with good reason, because they contain only all kinds of fantastic fantasies that the rational man of the present should no longer deal with; that this is no longer appropriate to an enlightened mind. But in a certain sense, these are indications that what we are now bringing out of the source of the spiritual worlds is in fact taking up something that was already there in the evolution of the earth, something that had only to flow underground for a time, like certain waters in the Alps flow underground after being above ground for a while; then they disappear into the depths and reappear later. So spiritual knowledge has flowed through the centuries as in underground worlds and is now to come out again. In order that those who cannot believe in such origins of the flowing out of spiritual sources into earthly existence may also receive an external indication, history has preserved some pieces, some scraps of a rich ancient literature that was spread out, that was great and powerful, and that is actually only really known in the counter-writings, for example those of Irenaeus and similar people who only wanted to refute it.

So we have to say: under extraordinarily difficult circumstances, the Mystery of Golgotha has been assimilated into Western culture. And the first thing was the result of the tremendous word of Paul, which flowed to him from his appearance of Damascus: the secret of death, of the passage through the Mystery of Golgotha. And then there were those far-reaching discussions about the way in which the Christ was connected to the Jesus, how the divine and human natures were connected to each other, how the three forms of manifestation of the divine, which enter into the development of Western Christian culture as the three persons, relate to each other, and so on. One could say that what was human wisdom receded. The power of knowledge also receded. It was an enormously strong power of wisdom that was present in those people who could come to something like what I have just read to you – a strong power of wisdom. It declined very, very much. And people were much more willing to listen to those who could say: The Jesus, the Christ, was there in person on earth. You know that he was there, because I knew Polycarp, and Polycarp knew the disciples of Jesus! There was an immediate personal tradition. In a certain way, belief in only that which was physically present, in physical development, begins to take hold. As spiritual wisdom gradually seeps away, belief in the merely physical arises. You can say: Irenaeus, for example — what kind of a mind was he? He was a thinker who said: There were Gnostics who claimed to know something through a mind that can work independently of the physical body. All this is wrong, all this is, as they said at the time, heretical, people must not believe in it. And he refuted it. More and more such refuters appeared, further and further afield. And of course there was the power of the Mystery of Golgotha, the power of the fact, the power of tradition. Through what had been handed down, what seemed to be fact, Christianity now propagated itself. What propagated itself as science actually seeped away. And the successor of Irenaeus in our time fights everything that comes from real knowledge of the spiritual world. Who is the forerunner and who is the successor? Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyon, who fought the Gnostics; and the Irenaeus of our time, the bishop of matter in Jena, is Ernst Haeckel — the successor of Irenaeus. That is the line of development, my dear friends! The others are only anachronisms, because the rejection of Ernst Haeckel also stems from the same spirit. In terms of thinking, there is a straight line of reproduction from Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyon, to Ernst Haeckel. These things must be taken objectively and historically, not with any sense of critical sympathy or antipathy, but quite objectively and historically.

When we imagine this entire process of spiritual development, we get a feeling for something that has already been touched on from a different angle: that what people could understand did not actually help this Christian development. Understanding, spiritual comprehension, is yet to come. For people had lost the strength to understand something that can only be understood spiritually, like the Mystery of Golgotha. That through which the Mystery of Golgotha conquered humanity was not through the intellect, but through the fact. And this fact actually worked in a very strange way.

Now, only a very faint echo of this remains. In the early centuries, when the story of the appearance of Christ on earth at Christmas was told, the first chapters of the creation story were read first. The Christmas mystery was directly linked to the creation story, the beginning of the Bible. Now only one thing remains in connection with it: if you look at the calendar, you have Christmas on December 25, Adam and Eve on December 24. That this appears in the calendar in direct connection is the last remnant of what was present in consciousness: that people thought together when Christmas was once established for a certain season of the year, the story of creation with the Christmas mystery. But not only that outwardly the story of Creation was first told and then the Christmas mystery, but also that attention was repeatedly drawn to one of the most profound legends, which sought to express the connection between the world, the beginning of the earth, and the mystery of Golgotha. Attention was called to the fact that when Adam had been driven out of Paradise, the tree through which he had sinned, the tree of knowledge of good and evil, had also been removed from Paradise; how fruits, seeds of this tree, were planted on Adam's grave, and this tree grew out of it. And then the wood of this tree, the tree of Paradise, came down from generation to generation to the time when the Christ appeared on earth. And then the cross was made out of this wood, out of the wood that had just grown again from the grave that was Adam's grave. The Redeemer hung on the cross.

This legend about the connection between the beginning of the world and the Mystery of Golgotha was repeated again and again in earlier centuries to those people who were able to understand such things. They were told: The tree of Paradise, which man had sinned against, was thrown out over Paradise, and seeds came into the soil that was on that grave of Adam. And from these germs arose again the tree, of which man had sinned in Paradise. And this wood of the tree was given from generation to generation and then came in many detours into the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, and the cross on which the Christ hung is made of this wood.

This legend also contains the connections between the beginning of the earth and the Mystery of Golgotha. But things are so interconnected, so intimately connected, that there are certain plays that were performed not only at Christmas as plays about Christ, but as plays about Paradise. These are plays about Paradise in which the mystery of Adam and Eve and the Fall of Man was presented to the people directly, when Christmas, or rather, when the Feast of the Epiphany, the Three Kings, approached on January 6.

Consider, my dear friends, the deeply spiritual facts to which we are led. We think of the Luciferic-Ahrimanic seduction of man, of what has become of man through the Ahrimanic-Luciferic seduction, and we think that this is represented by the figure of Adam, who succumbed to temptation. When we fully understand this Ahrimanic-Luciferic temptation, we must necessarily think that the evolution of the earth would have been quite different if the Luciferic-Ahrimanic temptation had not approached man. But this Luciferic-Ahrimanic temptation has only one meaning for life on earth in the physical body. It can only gain significance from the moment we enter earthly life from the spiritual world through birth, or, let us say, through conception. The Luciferic-Ahrimanic temptation cannot have this significance for the time between death and a new birth, because it has this significance here in earthly life.

Therefore, when we see the child enter into earthly life, we perceive correctly when we say: You appear, you soul, who are here in the flesh, you appear out of a world sphere that is still untouched by the nature of Lucifer and Ahriman. You only enter by growing more and more together with the flesh into the nature of Lucifer and Ahriman.

And when we look at the child, we see a spiritual mystery of the world. The moment a human being enters into earthly development, he is already predetermined by his previous incarnations to grow together with the flesh. But people should once feel what it means to enter into the earth without being predetermined for earthly life. That this thought should awaken in man, the thought of what actually dwells in man as an entity through which he is connected with the heavenly, with the solar, that this should awaken in man, for this the Christ-child conquered the spiritual development of mankind. And this Christ-child conquered the spiritual development of mankind in just the way He could conquer it.

There were basically two currents in the whole Christian development. We can understand these two currents very well. Through two bodies, the Christ entered the world: through the Nathanic Jesus and through the Solomonic Jesus. I would say that He entered through the Nathanic Jesus as through the earthly child. You can see how I have described it in the cycles and also in the book 'The Spiritual Leading of Man and Humanity'. Through the Nathanic Jesus, the Christ entered the earth in such a way that this Nathanic Jesus was a being, as preserved from the previous development on earth, as the substance from the beginning of the earth. But the Solomonic Jesus: an upward development that has gone through many, many earthly incarnations. So two paths that should then meet in the way I have described.

But now imagine that all this is happening at a time when spiritual wisdom is dying out, when there is no possibility of grasping this. Such infinite depth comes into play that two Jesus-children are there through whom the Christ is to come into the world. That infinite depth is entering in, which people who understand nothing of the whole matter, despite being officially appointed to do so, blaspheme and condemn today. That which could only have been understood through that wisdom that has been eradicated is entering in. It is no wonder that this fact has entered in a way that can only be understood little by little through our science. Therefore, the following endeavor was first made. When more of the old wisdom began to seep through, little by little, people wanted to place more emphasis on the appearance of Christ Jesus on Earth, on the onset of the great world events. That is why they established the Feast of the Epiphany, the manifestation of the Lord, on January 6th. This is more closely connected with the Solomon-like Jesus, with the Jesus who appeared as a king, who appeared from a royal line. He was also understood more through what was royal-magical wisdom. In contrast, the other, the Nathanic Jesus, who actually had nothing of what had happened on earth in his substance, was transferred to this deep winter time, which is now Christmas. People have not understood that these two belong together, and have even separated the dates of birth. For in older centuries, the birth of Jesus is still celebrated on January 6. But the fact that two births were celebrated is quite understandable to anyone who can speak of two Jesus boys. Even the way people thought about Jesus is actually available in two versions. One relates more to the Jesus who entered without having previously entered into connection with what human differentiations on earth have brought about through nations and classes and races: the Jesus who can enter, understood by the simplest popular feeling – the Luke Jesus, the Nathanic Jesus. The other Jesus, the Solomon-like Jesus, is more comprehensible through that which is heavenly wisdom, through a wisdom through which that which remains of the old magical wisdom seeps through.

It is not wrong to say: First we saw the first Jesus-Play, this simple Jesus-Play, to which the old remnants of the magical wisdom cannot be applied at all: this is the Nathanian Jesus-Child. In the other, there is the wisdom that still remained: the Jesus who entered the world from royal blood — the second play that had an effect on us. People did not know about it, but the two Jesus boys had an effect in that people made such fundamentally different plays out of them.

So, first of all, I wanted to give a few hints as to how the Paradise Play grew together with the Christmas Play, so that the whole has a meaning. We will talk about it again tomorrow. Today, however, I would just like to once again commend to you the words that I spoke at the end yesterday and also in the course of the reflections, that these Christmas Plays are at the same time - in a certain sense even the simplest - yet a warning. And they were also a warning to all those who listened.

Again, what we have to want should be a kind of world Christmas in a spiritual sense. The Christ should again be born, at least in human understanding, in a spiritual way. All this work within spiritual science is actually a kind of Christmas celebration, a birth of the Christ in human wisdom. The only question is whether people will come in large numbers who are now able to understand. Yes, I would like to say that one could hear many a farmer sitting there when such a Christmas play as yesterday's first play was performed in earlier centuries. The whole community came in and now the farmers were sitting there. Now it was like this: sometimes one of the farmers would say to the other: “Tell me, are you actually a host or are you a shepherd?” Then the other would reflect on whether he was a host or a shepherd. But I think that, in view of what is known about Christ in modern science, one could also ask people: “Are you a host or are you a shepherd?” For one hears the landlords railing quite vividly and saying: What do you want here at my door? Away with you, seek a lodging somewhere else, not with us! The others are the shepherds. There is also a skeptic among them, Mops, who also does not want to understand the appearance, but still lets himself be carried through the coridan by a certain sense of truth. I think it could make us think about the question and the answer in the soul with which some people used to go out after watching the Christmas play, the farmers in the 16th, 17th, 18th centuries: Well, tell me, are you actually a host, or are you a shepherd? – Let us hope, my dear friends, that, little by little, many shepherds will arise in our way, so that the innkeepers, who can be heard from afar, will gradually be silenced.

Yesterday I tried to point out an important fact in the context of the whole Christ problem, a fact that is undoubtedly surprising: the fact that a whole body of wisdom has actually disappeared, and is only known today in a few fragments, in a few remnants, some of which were presented here yesterday from one of the remnants, namely the beginning of the Book of Jeô. Now we must ask ourselves: can a body of wisdom that was available simply disappear without a trace? Can there only be external reasons for such a disappearance? I used a comparison: I said that it would be conceivable for everything that has now been printed and remains to be burned, leaving only the opposing writings, from which one could later reconstruct what we said. Now, certainly, the case could arise. But this hypothesis cannot really be put forward just like that. Because if you think that all the writings would really disappear, then many of us would still be around – at least one can assume that – who know what is in these writings and who, without needing the opposing writings, could pass on the matter further, and so the wisdom could well be passed on. For the matter to disappear completely, it would be necessary that in a certain way, little by little, the abilities to understand the matter and to pass it on from generation to generation would also disappear. But that must have happened in the past. In a certain way, it must have happened in the past that people lost the ability to understand something like the Gnosis of Valentinus, like the content of the Pistis Sophia writing, like the content of the Book of Jeû and so on. And that is really the case. We must absolutely imagine that on the broad basis of that old heritage, which was lived out in older times as the most primitive clairvoyance, then gradually petered out and faded away, but that higher knowledge, spiritual knowledge, was also developed. This was, of course, cultivated only by a few who were trained in the mysteries, but it was present in the wider community. And we must further imagine that through the gradual paralysis of the faculties to comprehend such things, the whole matter was not only forgotten but disappeared. People simply no longer had the ability to understand such things within Western culture. As a result, only what was wisdom could be lost. So we can truly say that by looking at the time immediately preceding and following the Mystery of Golgotha, we are looking at a time when, to a large extent, old abilities were disappearing and work was being done entirely from scratch, from the new. It can be said that as humanity developed towards the Mystery of Golgotha, there was a dimming out, a disappearance of a very special way of looking at things and thinking, which was of a spiritual nature and through which one could have understood the coming of the Christ into the world as a spiritual being.

Thus, precisely at the time when the Christ connects with the evolution on earth, the knowledge through which the nature and essence of this Christ could have been understood in the actual, deeper sense disappears. This is an important fact. I have already pointed out something very significant in various parts of our reflections. I said: the proclamation of Christ as such is not something that is so completely new, for example, with the event of Golgotha. No, the mysteries already spoke of the Christ as the Coming One. There were teachings in the mysteries that the Christ would come. This Christ Being was understood in the sense of the lost spiritual wisdom. But these mysteries had gradually fallen into disrepair, so that just as the Christ came, the time approached when people were least suited to speak about this Christ. This can be seen not only from everything I have already mentioned, but also from what remains with people who now want to form an idea of the Christ secret that is fresh and new.

In the first centuries of Christian development, we have such great minds as, for example, Clement of Alexandria and Origen, two eminent minds. If you want to characterize them from a certain point of view, this Clement of Alexandria, who thus followed the Gnostics, when Gnosticism had already dawned, as did Origen, then you have to say that they strive to recognize: What is the actual truth about this mystery of Golgotha? On the one hand, we are dealing with the Christ – they still knew that. This Christ can only be understood as a spiritual being that has to do with the spiritual, with the supersensible impulses. This Christ descends from cosmic spiritual regions. They no longer knew exactly how the old Gnosticism was able to understand the Christ, but they knew that He must be understood as a spiritual being with spiritual abilities. That they knew about the Christ. On the other hand, Jesus was an historical personality to them. The appearance of Jesus was an historical fact to them. They said to themselves, “So many years ago, in a certain part of the Near East, a personality was born, Jesus, who was the bearer of the Christ, a human being in whom God was present.” This became the riddle for them. They said to themselves, “We are dealing with an historical personality in the historical development, we are dealing with the Christ in the spiritual understanding.” How should one conceptualize the union of the two? And with such eminent, such great spirits as Clement of Alexandria and Origen are, we see a struggle, a fight with it: to be able to grasp how the Christ is in the Jesus, therein is.

If we first look at Clement of Alexandria, who headed the Catechetical School of Alexandria, where those who were to be trained and made into Christian teachers were trained, if we look at this significant personality, we find the following among the teachings of this personality. Clemens of Alexandria said to himself: The Christ belongs to those forces that were already active at the creation of the earth, of course he belongs to the spiritual world. He has entered into the evolution of the earth through the body of Jesus of Nazareth. So Clemens of Alexandria first turned his gaze to the Christ as a spiritual being, seeking to understand him in spiritual regions. Now Clement of Alexandria also knew the following, which we have also emphasized several times before. He knew that the Christ was actually always there for people, but not in the earthly region. Only those who developed powers within themselves through the mysteries were able to reach him, by virtue of which they could leave the body. When they, the people, emerged from the body through the powers of the mysteries and entered into the spiritual regions, they recognized the Christ and felt that He was the One Who was to come. This was known to Clement of Alexandria. He knew that in the old mysteries there was mention of the Christ as the Coming One, Who had not yet been united with the evolution of the earth. He expressed it thus: “Certainly, people were inspired to expect the Christ.” And he went so far as to say: “Specifically at two points in the spiritual development of humanity, was there a cultivation of that which could prepare for the coming of the Christ.” Clement of Alexandria said: “On the one hand, it was cultivated by Moses and the prophets.” What came into the world through Moses and the prophets, he said, was a preparation. People should first experience what came through Moses and the prophets, so that with the help of their own intuition they could then have a feeling for it: We have the Christ. That is what they were supposed to imagine. So he knew nothing of the ancient Gnostic wisdom, or at least he did not apply it. But he said that what came through Moses and the prophets to human abilities was “preparation.” And then – this is very significant – as a second thing that was to prepare for the coming of Christ, besides Moses and the prophets, Clement of Alexandria mentioned Greek philosophy: Plato and Aristotle – Greek philosophy. He said, as it were, that Moses and the prophets and Greek philosophy were there to prepare people for the event, for the fact of the Mystery of Golgotha.

And again Origen said to himself: We are dealing with the Christ: with the Christ who, as a spiritual being, can be understood by spiritual powers, we are dealing with the historical Jesus, with that personality that once existed as a real personality belonging to the world of the senses. How do the two come together – the god with the human being? How is the God-man created? — And Origen came up with a theory. He said to himself: the God cannot simply dwell in the physical man, but there first had to be a special soul in Jesus, so that this soul can mediate between the God and the man, that is, the God as a pure spiritual being with the physical man. So he added the soul. And so he distinguished in Christ Jesus the God, the pure pneumatic being, the pure spiritual being, then the psyche, the soul, and the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth. He therefore tried to form a concept of how the Christ could be in Jesus of Nazareth. He no longer had the old gnosis to imagine the Christ's dwelling on earth and the Christ's connection with the evolution of the earth. One had to work from the fresh, from the new. One had to make an effort to achieve this. So just when the Christ as a real being had united with the evolution of the earth, people had the greatest difficulty in even understanding this fact. The abilities were present to the very least extent.

And why that was, Clement of Alexandria had at least some understanding of it. He said to himself: How then were these old mystery people inspired? It was through the Christ, said Clement of Alexandria to himself, that the Christ also worked through them, but supernaturally, when they came out of themselves. This happened, as Clement of Alexandria very clearly expresses it, because he sent them the angels. So that Clement of Alexandria said it outright: when the Old Testament speaks of the appearance of an angel, it means that the Christ sends that angel. Yes, Clement of Alexandria makes it expressly clear: When Yahweh appears to Moses in the burning bush, it is actually the Christ who appears, who appears through the earthly-soul-spiritual appearance. So that Clement of Alexandria expressly states: In ancient times, before the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ appeared to people through the angels. If they were able to perceive the message of the angels, then they actually stood face to face with Christ Himself as disembodied, initiated disembodied beings of the higher world.

So far went Clement of Alexandria. And then he said – and this is again contained in his work –: In the progress of time development, Christ has passed from the nature of an angel to the nature of a son. He has become a son. He could manifest Himself earlier, reveal Himself through the angels or as an angel, as a multitude of angels, as many angels. When He wanted to appear to one as an angel, when He wanted to appear to another as another angel, He appeared through many forms. Then He appeared through the one form: the Son.

Here a very important element comes into play. Please pay attention to this, it is extremely important! Clement of Alexandria still takes the view that the Christ was already present in the spiritual regions before the Mystery of Golgotha. He had reached the point where he could make himself known through angels, through messengers. But he progressed further, he came to be able to express himself as the Son. This is extremely important.

What is it that actually enters into human understanding? — If we go through all this old Gnosticism, it has a peculiarity. If, for example, I wanted to draw you a diagram of this Gnosticism, I could say the following: This Gnosticism imagines a person of evolution who emanated from the Father, the Primordial Father, from the so-called Silence or “iyn, from the Primordial Spirit. These ancient Gnostics indicated thirty different levels. They called them eons. So I could mention thirty here. Now, to some extent, a second stream; while the first stream is spiritual, they indicated a second stream that is soul-related. Within this stream, they recognized the two main eons of origin in Christ and Sophia. Then a number of eons came again. And they indicated a third current: the demiurge with matter. And these came together and formed the human being.

You can make such schematics from the way these Gnostics thought. These ideas are not entirely unreal, not entirely imaginary, because the human being is a complex creature. When I once explained how many seven-part aspects there are in the human being – you included it in one of the Norwegian cycles, I believe it is called “Man in the Light of Occultism, Theosophy and Philosophy” – our dear friends were quite amazed at how many, many differences actually have to be looked for in the human being. These differences are reminiscent of what the Gnostics already knew from their point of view. But when one approaches this Gnosis, one thing is always the same: the concept of time plays little role in it. One can express the Gnostic through spatial schematics. The concept of time does not play a special role, at least one does not penetrate it with understanding. And in this respect there is progress from Gnosis to Clement of Alexandria. Even if the entire comprehensive wealth of spiritual wisdom was lost, there was still progress in that Clement of Alexandria brought the concept of time into the development of the Christ and said: The Christ revealed Himself earlier, could make Himself known earlier through angels, then as a son, because He Himself had progressed. Development came into it, that is the significant thing. It cannot be emphasized often enough that the Western cultural development was there to then bring the concept of time into the world view in the right way, to understand the idea of development in the right way. This is so important, this is of far-reaching significance, to look at the development and to see how Christ originally could only make himself known through the angels, and then, after he has gone through the mystery of Golgotha, appears as the Son. Through the angels he is the messenger of something that is outside the world and indeed permeates the world, but which, if it is to be recognized, must be recognized from outside the world: Messenger, later, when he appears as a son, he permeates everything. Just as the son of a blood is one with the father within the physical world, so the spirit-son of a being is to be imagined with the father in the spiritual world. Being a son is different from simply being an angel. So when this entity reveals itself as a son, it is an advance over the earlier revelation, where it could only reveal itself as an angel, as a messenger.

So in Christianity there was a kind of more advanced understanding than there was within the old Gnosticism. But I would say that the after-effects of Gnosticism were still needed in order to say what Clement of Alexandria said. When Gnosticism gradually disappeared altogether, one could no longer even say what Clement and Origen said. People increasingly came to identify with those impulses that were the impulses of later times, the purely materialistic impulses. And so it came about that Origen's teaching was condemned. It was declared heretical. The element that caused it to be declared heretical consists in particular in the fact that one wanted to renounce such an understanding of the matter, coming from man himself and his powers. One felt: that can no longer be there. But how does the matter appear to us now? How must it appear to us? We see, after all, that an old spiritual wisdom had spread on the basis of old clairvoyance. That was there, it is gradually disappearing. Within this spiritual wisdom, even if it related to an extraterrestrial being, there was a wisdom about the Christ. Just when the Christ descended to Earth, this had disappeared. The real Christ was connected with the earth. The knowledge of the Christ had disappeared in time. There you have another case on a large scale, which I ask you to look at properly. We can look beyond the then known earth, beyond the earth before the mystery of Golgotha. The further back we go, the more knowledge of the Christ we find, even if it is the Christ who must be thought of in supersensible regions. But it is a knowledge that can only be imparted by angels. This is evolution. This knowledge, this idea of the Christ is distributed among many people. The Christ lived as the inspirer of many people: evolution.

This knowledge slowly recedes, disappears, fades away, and in the one being, in Jesus of Nazareth, everything that was once distributed is concentrated. Imagine a drop of Christ-inner-self within evolution in one of the mystery priests, a second, third, fourth and so on, in each of the mystery initiates one would find: he has something of the Christ in him when he leaves his body with his spirit. The Christ is multiplied in them. All this disappears. And in a single point, in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, all that was distributed contracts: involution.

Precisely that which had been withdrawn from all others appeared in the one body. And so we see that what was distributed, what lived in evolution, must disappear from the earth by concentrating on the one point, on the body of Jesus of Nazareth. That is this important fact. Within the most significant involution, evolution ceases. So now the time is coming when the Christ lives with the earth, but the Christ-knowledge does not live in the earth, the Christ-knowledge must first develop again.

Now the great difficulties are there, we have already hinted at them: on the one hand you have the Jesus, on the other hand you have the Christ. And do you think that the old wisdom of the connection in man has been lost at all? All this time, nothing has been known about what it is all about with man. Only now are we again dividing the human being into physical body, etheric body, sentient soul and so on. We are only just beginning to do this again. In the individual human being, we now distinguish again the physical-earthly, which continues in the line of inheritance, and the higher spiritual, which descended again from spiritual worlds. Origen did not know this, nor did Clement of Alexandria. They did not know enough about the spiritual and soul life and the physical life of the individual human being walking on earth. That is why they had difficulty understanding the individual aspects of the essence of Christ Jesus. Knowledge about the human being had been lost, hence this difficulty in understanding the God-man. And so the knowledge about Jesus and the knowledge about the Christ became more and more divergent. And it is of infinite importance for our time that we understand how this, as it were, affects the time again, inasmuch as that which our spiritual science contains must appear in it. It is tremendously important to look precisely at this falling apart of the Jesus and the Christ. This is an extremely serious, an extremely important matter. And it confronts us in so many ways.

We have seen these Christmas plays pass before us. In the second play, we felt something of the Christ; in the first, the pure figure of Jesus in the second, the simple and primitive. One can say that gradually the Jesus-child, that is, the starting point of Jesus, has conquered the minds of people. Only in the Middle Ages does one begin to look towards the child. Before that, Christians took part in the sacrifice of the Mass, they heard about the mystery that the Christ had gone through death, the Pauline doctrine and so on. But the Bible was not popular, the Bible was only in the hands of the priests. The faithful had to take part in the sacrifice of the Mass, which was offered to them in Latin. But there was no participation in the proceedings of the sacred action. And that which is contained in the Gospels only gradually conquered minds and souls. And so it was only really from the middle of the Middle Ages that such plays, such representations of the appearance of Jesus and so on, could be offered to people. Today one actually has the idea: The Mystery of Golgotha was, and from then on people would have known something of this Mystery of Golgotha. Yes, what they knew was that the Christ had died on the cross. People were especially aware of the Easter event. But the Christmas event was completely unknown, it crept into people's minds and hearts only very slowly and gradually. That was the external side, how people learned about what had happened in Palestine in pictures. Only gradually, through the dramatic presentation, did people begin to imagine what had happened in Palestine. It was the side of the mystery of Jesus. It was at the same time, just think, it was at the same time when, on the other hand, in mysticism, Tauler, Meister Eckhart and the others were again seeking the Christ through mysticism. So on the one hand we have the first emergence of Christmas plays: Jesus is sought as externally as possible, namely in direct external representation – Jesus is sought – and the mystics seek the Christ, they seek to develop the soul to such an extent that they see the Christ emerging in them, they seek to experience the completely transformed, completely unworldly, purely spiritual Christ in the soul. Mysticism on the one hand, Christmas plays on the other — the Jesus and the Christ are sought at the same time on two different, far-removed paths! What was a theoretical difficulty for Origen, the inability to reconcile the Christ with the Jesus, is encountered in the villages outside. Among the people, Jesus is shown in the form of a child. The deep mystics seek the Christ by wanting to lead their own soul to an inner feeling, almost to an inner sensing of the Christ. But where is the connection? Where is it, this connection? Things go side by side. Think how far apart what the simple person, the simple eye, sees in the Christmas plays is from the deep mysticism of a Meister Eckhart or a Johannes Tauler. But the beginnings of the Christmas plays fall into the time. Mysticism also lives on.

And in our time today - think of what the whole mystery of Golgotha has become for many theologians! Suppose: Those who are the most advanced theologians, what do they actually look at? They see that once at the beginning of our era in Nazareth or Bethlehem or somewhere, a chosen person was born, chosen especially to gradually feel within himself the connection between man and the spiritual world, a noble person - the noblest person, so noble that one can already say that he was almost - and even - not true, because the story is a bit patchy! One does not know how to find one's way around, what more can be said about the fact that in the course of Christianity he was after all conceived entirely as a god. And so one twists and turns, and there come all the Euckenisms and Harnackisms, which are so — yes, one cannot grasp it, but one wants in some way to be clever and yet have a way to understand Jesus as something, Christ as some kind of Christ. Well, and so one takes up the Gospels. Of course, as a modern person, one is embarrassed to admit the miracles. So one deletes what one can delete and constructs something highly natural out of it, something that can have happened for reasonable reasons. And then it goes to the event of Jerusalem, to the crucifixion. Up to the point of dying, that is still possible. But after the resurrection, that is no longer possible, and one then ventures into such things as Harnack, for example, ventures into saying: Yes, this resurrection, this grave from which Christ Jesus is said to have risen – the Easter mystery, yes, yes, the Easter mystery: one must indeed to the realization that from the Garden at the Skull this Easter secret has gone forth; the Easter secret has risen there – the thought of the resurrection has come from there, and to that we must cling and look no further for what has actually happened there; the idea of the resurrection has gone forth from there.

Now, isn't that something! Read “The Essence of Christianity” by Harnack, and you will find this peculiar resurrection idea! I once pointed this out at a meeting of the Giordano Bruno Society in a town and said: It is a strange idea that people want to deal with the resurrection in such a way that they say they do not want to touch what actually happened, but want to point out that the belief in the resurrection, the belief in the Easter mystery, has risen from that grave. — Then someone said to me: That can't stand with Harnack! That's almost Catholic, that's Catholic superstition. It's as if one should still believe that the Holy Shroud of Trier means something! That's superstition, that can't stand with Harnack. Yes, it is in Harnack after all, and I could do nothing else – I did not have the book at hand – than write a card to the gentleman in question the next day, saying that it was on page so and so. These are things that lead into difficulties. You can't get past them if you are to find the way from Jesus to the Christ. Someone once said to me: We modern theologians can no longer do anything with Christology, we can only use a Jesusology. — He said it, not me: It's a shame that the name Jesuit is already taken, because actually the confessors of modern theology should be called “Jesuits”. — Please, I didn't say it, but a confessor of modern theology!

Yes, well, that is one side of the story. The other side is that a number of modern theologians, in turn, adhere more to the Christ. They take the Gospels as their starting point. They do not take certain sayings in the Gospels in the same way as those I have just mentioned take what a reasonable person in the world can believe of a person even if he is a divine person. But when someone is called a “divine man,” it is not clear how far one should go in applying the divine: “Noble man, but more than Socrates” — but, well, it is not right. Now, there are those who are Jesusologists, for theologians, that is a word that is difficult to apply to them. Theology would mean divine wisdom. But the “divine” is to be deleted here. Then there are the others; they take the sayings a little more seriously. With certain sayings, they find: It is not right that the one who said them should be understood only as an ordinary human being. There are sayings in the Gospels that simply cannot be put into the mouth of a human being, a mere human being, in an honest way. And besides, they take the resurrection story seriously and so on. They now turn into Christologists as opposed to Jesus-ologists.

But now they arrive at something else. Read the book “Ecce Deus” and other books, and you will come to the conclusion that if you read the Gospels honestly, you cannot say that the Gospels are about a man. It is about a God, a real, true God. These people, in turn, lose Jesus. And they lose him very strongly, because they now say: the Gospels are all about a God; but the God cannot have existed, he cannot have existed, so we have to keep the Christ. The Christ is something that people talked about, but it did not live on earth. Christology without Jesus-ology, that is the other direction. But the two directions cannot come together. And so it is already really the case today: those who speak of the Christ have lost the Jesus, and those who speak of the Jesus have lost the Christ. The Christ has become an unreal god, and the Jesus has become an unreal man. It is imperative that we continue on this path, if nothing is added.

That which is added must be spiritual science, which in turn can comprehend how the Christ lived in Jesus. And that is basically one of the most important points of spiritual science teaching, that it can lead to an understanding of how the Christ, through the detour of the two Jesuses, could really become the being that placed itself at the center of the evolution of mankind on earth, because this spiritual science in turn has a view of what man is, how the spiritual, the soul and the physical are combined in man. And so, building on this, one can also understand how the Christ comes together with the Jesus. Of course, it is complicated and not easy to understand, but it can be understood. And so you see how, from the original, that which has been lost for humanity must be restored through spiritual science, also in relation to the understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. When the Christ appeared in the world, it was not possible to understand Him. This understanding must be acquired little by little. What He has worked, He has worked in actuality. But the starting points are there everywhere. And starting points can be found even in the simplest Christmas play.

What is presented? It becomes particularly clear where the Paradiesspiele are still considered, how a person enters the world, from whom it becomes clear only through what happens incidentally that it is Jesus. The human being enters the world as a child. I said: the Paradiesspiel was connected with it - the beginning of the development of the earth - with the Mystery of Golgotha. Why is that? We must take into account the fact that at the beginning of the evolution of the earth, man was exposed to the Luciferic temptation. As a result, he became a different being than he would have become in the regular process of evolution. So when we have Adam, symbolically speaking, outside of paradise, he is a different being than he was destined to be before the Luciferic temptation. How does that come to light? Imagine: Lucifer had not approached the human being, the human being would live without the Luciferic impulse, then he would live quite differently in the etheric body. When the human being passes through the gate of death and still has his etheric body, and then sheds it, that etheric body remains, but in this etheric body is imprinted what the human being does and thinks through the Luciferic seduction. The human being dies, passes through the gate of death. The physical body is given over to the elements. After a few days, the etheric body detaches itself from the human being. The person then goes his or her own way. But in this ethereal body is contained that which this etheric body has become through the fact that the person thinks and feels and acts as he must think and feel and act after the Luciferic temptation. So now imagine the earth. The human physical body goes into the earth, it is handed over to the elements of the earth. But his ether body remains connected to the earth. There we have the ether bodies of human beings, which are now in the earth's atmosphere. They are different from what they would be if the Luciferic temptation had not come. Of course, everything I have said about the ether bodies refers to these ether bodies. But what I am hinting at today also relates to this, so that we can say: A human being is embedded in the earth. That which he leaves behind on earth, what his etheric body has become during his life, is drier, more woody than it would be if the Luciferic temptation had not come. Woody, dry — this difference really exists. Imagine that the temptation of Lucifer had never occurred. In that case, at his death man would leave behind a much more “young” etheric body, as it were a much greener etheric body. He leaves behind a much more withered, dried-up etheric body through the temptation of Lucifer than he would have left behind without the temptation of Lucifer. It is already expressed in the legend that the lignified Paradise Tree grows out of Adam's grave. But that which lives in the earth lived before the Mystery of Golgotha in the Luciferically infected etheric body. That was precisely the element into which the body of Jesus of Nazareth entered in a redeeming way, as a phantom, as I once indicated in the Karlsruhe lectures. Now then, imagine Adam's grave: Adam's physical body consigned to the elements of the earth, emerging from the grave with the sclerotic etheric body, which is the representative of that which is infected with Lucifer in the human being and remains after death. At the same time, this is the wood on which the human being can be crucified. And this crucifixion arises in the lingering of the phantom of Jesus of Nazareth after the Mystery of Golgotha, which connects with the earth precisely with the help of the latter. This is expressed in the legend by saying: This wood passed from generation to generation and formed the wood of the cross of Golgotha. This image is the image that corresponds to a real fact, namely that through the crucifixion the phantom of Jesus of Nazareth united with what lived ethereally in the earth from all the etheric bodies infected by Lucifer, which had naturally scattered and thinned and dissolved, but were still there in their powers. The fact that we have to face here is a very significant and infinitely profound one, shedding light on the secrets of the earth.

But how does man become related to this ethereal body infected by Lucifer? By becoming immersed in the physical world, where he becomes a child. It is not yet natural there, where he becomes a child. Therefore, if you look at the child with the right feeling when it enters the world, you really see the man who is free of Lucifer. And if you are able to look at the child with the right feeling as it enters the world, you will already see the man with his relationship to Christ. This is the feeling that should be achieved in those to whom Jesus was handed over in the Christmas play: to feel what I have indicated on the very first pages of the little writing about the progress of people and humanity, where I spoke of the first three years, of this entering. For if what is permeating the human being could penetrate him in the middle of his life – I have hinted at it in it – then one would have an idea of the way in which the Christ lived in Jesus. This ability to look at what is not yet infected by Lucifer in the child is what can happen in the Christmas play.

And think what all this ultimately is. It is actually something tremendous when you look at the child in this way. In this little writing, I have pointed out how we are wiser in our youth, even if unconsciously wiser, because we have to build up our body little by little, which we cannot do later. One is cleverer, one is much wiser than one is later, in the inner penetration of the human being, of the human entity, but one does not yet have anything Luciferic. By working inwardly in this way when one is a child, up to the point in time to which one later remembers, one works on the fine chiseling of one's body. One works there according to infinitely wise laws, of which one can never get an inkling later on in the luciferic-ahrimanic permeated knowledge. When one works in this essence, one is still free from everything one later enters into by experiencing the world together with the body. One is free from all differences, even from the great difference of male and female. As a child, one is not yet living in the masculine and feminine. One is not yet in a class, racial or national difference in it. One is human, a mere human being. One is really in it, in which even those who now face each other in war through hatred, through what they only experience externally, have once lived. That people face each other in the world hating as belonging to different nations, that is only developed through those forces in which one lives together with the physical body. Before the child has lived together with the physical body, it still lives in the 'in-between', which is beyond national and class differences. It lives in the in-between, in which souls can truly live, wherever they are born on earth. Just think, people can face each other in terrible fighting, angry fighting, shoot each other dead – and those who shoot each other dead can pass through the gate of death in the community of Christ, in that in which they are when they are not yet afflicted with the differences of people. What faces each other hating, that the human being acquires only in the physical body, that has nothing to do with what is outside of the physical body. The present has much to learn, especially the present, by finding its way back to the worship of Jesus in time, when he is presented as a child, since he has not yet entered into that which differentiates people and causes them to quarrel and fight with each other. It is only through what a person experiences when he becomes something other than the child spoken of at Christmas that war and strife arise. What is played at Christmas is the human being, truly in connection with the cosmic powers, but in such a way that what does not enter into conflict, what those in their hearts can carry in the same way, is revealed externally on the physical plane in a unique form, even though they fight each other to the death.

There is an enormous depth to the fact that it is precisely in connection with the Nathanian Jesus-child that this side is presented to humanity, so that the human being touches himself with that side through which he enters the world without the shadow of differentiation, before he has entered into nations, into other differences, into those differences that he enters only through living together with the body. On the one hand, the idea of Jesus touches the idea of Christ, which can only be fully realized in the child Jesus; on the other hand, the idea of Christ comes into being when one can grasp purely, in the Jesus between the ages of thirty and thirty-three, what is now also spiritual, the being of Christ. In a twofold way, through the Nathanic and the Solomonic Jesus, a body has been prepared that can now stand apart from all that differentiates itself through human beings. And only in such a body can the Christ reveal Himself.

Thus, in our spiritual scientific sense, we see, as I have indicated in the booklet on the progress of man and humanity, the Jesus idea and the Christ idea growing together. This is the greatest and most significant need of our time. So far, people have had only one Christmas and only one Easter, but these do not belong together. For Easter is a Christ festival, while Christmas is a Jesus festival. Easter and Christmas will only lead the way together if one can understand how Christ and Jesus belong together. And spiritual science will build the bridge between Christmas and Easter. And from the simple play of the shepherds, a bridge is built to the finest understanding that can be gained when we pursue spiritual science to the point where we find the Christ through it. We must only have the ability to go with the attitude of the shepherds, not with the attitude of the landlords. The contrast between materialism and spiritualism is wonderfully contrasted in the “landlords” and the “shepherds”. And basically, that is the big question of our time: whether people want to be hosts or shepherds. A great deal of the events of our time stem from the fact that people are hosts. Being a host is widespread in the world. To be shepherds, we must again try to become shepherds. There will certainly still be many doubters among the shepherds, and when one says, “I think I see a glow there, that is, I perceive something spiritual,” the other will still say for a long time, “That's just fantasy.” But if the human being can only now develop the sides in himself that are not based on what has been acquired on earth, but can find the connection with what the human being has brought out of the spiritual, heavenly in his inner being, then he will be able to be a shepherd. Today people are too absorbed with the house they live in and the possessions they own, the things they have brought in from the earth. This can only be measured in terms of earthly values. But those who still have a certain connection with the spiritual forces that surge through the world, who still have the nature of a shepherd within them, they should be able to find the way to realize that, basically, external knowledge only reveals appearances. We will gradually begin to understand Christmas when we learn to distinguish between the host nature and the shepherd nature, and when we know how much of the host nature there is in our time. But there is one small problem that needs to be overcome. Of course we have to distinguish between the innkeeper and shepherd natures, since we are surrounded by innkeepers, and wherever we go we are surrounded by innkeepers and feel very much like a shepherd. Of course we always feel like a shepherd! One must get over that, at least to do a little research into the innkeeper element that one carries within oneself, and not to see oneself as a shepherd at all. One will sometimes have to ask oneself: Do I already see the light that is to come and announce what is to come through the new spiritual science? — We will have to cultivate everything that can awaken in us the feelings: to be able to celebrate Christmas in our hearts in this new spiritual direction, to seek the light out of the darkness, but to seek within ourselves and really want to seek, really want to seek, and by really feel that it is not over at once, and that you have to keep coming back, like the shepherds did, who also promise to come back; they don't want to leave it over at once.

Yes, there is still much to be learned from this simple Christmas play, and so I think it is good that we cultivate this simplest way of experiencing the Christmas mystery in these simple forms among ourselves for a while. For many difficult struggles will confront spiritual striving in the coming time, and only those who have truly learned to become shepherds in the spiritual grasp of the Christmas mystery with all the humility of shepherds, but also with all the wise searching of the shepherd who is faithfully united with the world, will find the way. Let us inscribe this in our hearts and souls this Christmas season, so that we may become more and more seeking shepherds and learn in time to seek the sacred in the innermost soul mood of man, as it has been found out of the profane mood, as I have characterized it to you, as more out of a carnival, not a sacred conversation, the most solemn form of the Christmas play also gradually arose.

If we try to seek the spiritual in the context of what the Christmas plays showed us, then we will find it in the right sense as shepherds, not as innkeepers, who have already lost — as the Christmas play symbolically suggests — the connection with the Christmas child. And our time has a great need of it, a very great need of it, our time in which materialism has acquired such wide, wide areas of the outer world, of inner human feeling, and in which it is so difficult for a spiritual world view to even find the right words to express what the right words are, given the misused words with which one expresses oneself.

Translated by Steiner Online Library

[After a speech by Emil Molt, Rudolf Steiner takes the floor:]

Rudolf Steiner: Ladies and Gentlemen! Today is the second time that I have had the honor of addressing you here. The first time was at the invitation of Mr. Molt, to speak about what I believed at the time to be necessary for the progress of humanity out of the great turmoil into which human aberration and its consequences, the terrible catastrophe of the world wars, had led us. Today I am to speak in the presence of the light-filled Christmas tree for the Christmas celebration. But please do not expect me to give you any of the usual Christmas speeches, which can still be heard so often in our time. I would feel like a dishonest person if I did that, and I would also have to believe that if you yourselves are true in your feelings, you cannot bring anything from your hearts to such an unctuous speech. For let us admit it to ourselves: what is often heard in Christmas speeches today seems as if an inertia that has been held for centuries, a kind of mental inertia, had held on to words that still held their validity for times long past, but which today, in view of the world situation in which we find ourselves, seem as if those who speak them would see nothing with open eyes of what is truly going on around us.

Christmas today – one may say it bluntly, I think – is basically something that, in the feelings of the great mass of people and also in the feelings of the few who until recently were called the upper ten thousand, should initially only be a memory, a memory of feelings, of inner forces that were once alive in humanity, which, however, and we will talk about this, deserve to be revived, revived in a new form, but which are not alive today.

When Christmas approaches, people today think - depending on whether they are more or less blessed with goods of fortune - of giving each other more or less precious gifts. They also think of lighting the Christmas tree and getting into some kind of mood, although they don't really know what it is supposed to be. But it wasn't always like that. And I would like to mention just one detail – one could mention many such things, but let us think of this one detail; in a certain way it also characterizes the other things that were associated with Christmas in earlier centuries.

We can look back to the areas that are also around Stuttgart, which go far up to Thuringia and Hesse, which go over to Baden and Alsace and further into France, which go down to Italy, over to Bavaria and so on. We can see this area by looking back in history, and a remarkable picture presents itself to us as we look ahead to the approaching Christmas season.

In most villages – since this area was even less interspersed with towns back then, I am talking about the 14th and 15th centuries – a group of young men was gathered from October onwards, and this group of young men was to learn roles in order to perform Christmas plays at the time of the consecration festival. The text of these Christmas plays was usually available in handwritten form from a particularly favored family in each locality; they held it sacred. No one knew who had written it, so far back in time were memories of these Christmas plays; but the text was held sacred. As early as October, the person in possession of this text, who was also held in particularly high esteem in the village in question, would gather the young men he thought suitable for the performance. In those days, such performances were not yet performed with women, but only with male youths, who also played female roles, the role of Mary and so on. So this group of young men was assembled and taught. Strange traditions have been preserved from this teaching, and from these traditions, these traditions, one can see the deep sentiment with which the Christmas season was imbued as it approached.

There was, for example, the strict regulation that all those who were to play along, that is, who were the learning students of a teacher – it was prescribed, forgive me for mentioning such a harsh regulation after all – that all of them were not allowed to go to their girlfriends during the whole time. We only have to go back to the old cultural conditions to understand what such a rule meant, but it was strictly adhered to by the people who were considered called to take part in something like this. A second rule was that during the entire time that the young men were rehearsing the Christmas play, they had to obey their teacher strictly. That was also a rule that would be extremely difficult to enforce today. We, at least, who are now endeavoring to perform these plays again in the Anthroposophical Society, can hardly carry out any of these provisions. As for the first provision, it refers to something that does not occur at all among anthroposophists, and as for the second provision, it would never be adhered to, because such obedience does not exist there. The third rule, on the other hand, is one that cannot be implemented in anthroposophical circles if we are to rehearse these plays today. This is because the third rule meant that you had to pay a fine if you forgot something and said it wrong during the performance. We couldn't implement that either, because no one would pay the fine.

So I just wanted to mention these individual provisions to show you what was possible back then, out of the sacred mood. Now, there is something we cannot do within the Anthroposophical Society either, where we have resumed the Christmas plays in many places, especially this year, for example in many places in Switzerland, where they were rediscovered, because they had gradually been forgotten in the 19th century and were no longer performed. However, there is one thing we cannot do either: the teacher, who rehearsed these festival plays with the group of young people, was joined, as was only natural in a time when Christianity was as alive as in the centuries I have spoken of, by the local clergy. Of course, we cannot achieve that either. Then the teachers joined them. As it turned out, we could achieve this more easily, and we also succeeded where these teachers in particular had grown out of our own ranks.

Now, I presented all this to you to give you a picture of what was approaching in the mood of the individual places when the holy Christmas season approached. For what were people actually preparing for? They were not preparing for the Christmas tree – that did not yet exist at the time, it is at most 150 years old, when it was first established –; people did not gather around the Christmas tree, but they gathered to commemorate in the mood, in the inner experience of the heart, what they imagined with the birth of Christ Jesus. That was indeed a very different, more vivid conception than it can be today. For people in those days had a different awareness of human dignity and human existence. They still lived quite differently with one another, so the Christmas message was still something for them.

In this Christmas message, we may remember today, there is indeed a deep democratic trait. Today, we have no right to emphasize this democratic trait from the official confessions. But then, if one wants to cultivate true Christianity, as it must first arise again in humanity, then, my dear audience, one perhaps has a right to mention precisely this democratic trait.

There were two prophecies regarding the birth of Jesus Christ. One was for those who, at that time, we can say, formed what we might call the proletariat, and the other was for the shepherds in the field who sensed in their hearts that a time had come that needed healing. And out of this mood arose the mood that was poured into their words: Revelation of the divine, of the spiritual, in the heights, and peace to the people on earth who are of good will. - A drawing closer of man to the spiritual, that is what was felt. And in this approach, something was seen that was to bring renewal and refreshment to humanity from the conditions that existed at that time and that seemed unbearable.

But there is not only this one proclamation for those who could be called the proletariat of that time, for the poor shepherds in the field. There is a second proclamation, that for the wise men, for the kings from the East, that is, for those who were at the top of humanity at that time, for those who were the opposite of the proletariat of that time. Just as the shepherds in the field received the Christmas proclamation in their own way, so they also received the wise kings in their own way. But both found themselves confronted by that which simply wanted to be the representative of the whole of humanity. And in the same way, on the one hand the shepherds in the field and on the other the wise kings from the East, sacrificed and worshiped this representative of the whole of humanity, of the pure humanity that knows no human distinction. In this is indicated in the Christmas proclamation the deeply democratic trait that runs through Christianity and which, despite the many centuries, has not been fully realized to this day, and which can only be realized if one maintains a proper sense of this general, purely human quality that lives in all people and that knows no human distinctions.

One might say that the three main festivals that humanity, Christian humanity, has celebrated over the centuries, in the time when they were still alive in thought and feeling, drew people's attention, one might say, to a threefold structure of the year.

Christmas speaks most to the feelings; it speaks to the feelings by directing them to what, in the highest sense, has poured itself out over the world as the impulse of democracy.

Easter should take hold of the human being's thoughts more, should point him more to spirituality and freedom, while Christmas should point more to equality among people, to the absence of differences, if one wants to work into the deepest part of the human being. Easter should stir in man that liberating feeling that overcomes him when he rises to the spiritual and when he gains an awareness that the spiritual must ultimately always triumph if the world is not to perish, over external material things. This resurrection of the spiritual out of the material is, after all, the Easter idea. When the soul can resurrect inwardly, then it actually experiences freedom by being able to put itself in the place of the spiritual.

And the idea of Pentecost points us to brotherhood. It is presented to us in such a way that we are made aware of how those who were called upon to proclaim Christianity at the time found the right tone to speak to all people in pure brotherhood, to approach all people. If we understand it correctly, it points to what we must feel inwardly if we want to achieve brotherhood in relation to the external, material life of humanity.

It is something ancient, rooted in the human spirit, which has always guided thought in the most diverse areas of life according to the threefold order. Today, my dear audience, we need this threefold order again to heal something in humanity, again to eradicate something unhealthy. Therefore, it was basically for the same reason that I spoke when I had the honor of addressing you for the first time, and that I would like to speak to you today.

We live in a time that is so ill that most people do not want to imagine their illness, partly out of convenience, partly perhaps even out of ill will, but mainly out of selfishness. It is indeed the case today that most people who are content with comfort are always satisfied when, out of the turmoil of the day, a little improvement appears here and there and they can see that not everything has fallen apart, that there and there is “a better economy”. But for those who can see through it, today's life is like that of a person who, three years ago, was still able to buy a suit, and wears this suit - even if it is a bit shabby, he can still wear it - but he cannot buy a new one. And because he can still wear this suit, he still believes himself to be in a possible situation in life. But it is in store for him that one day the suit can no longer be worn. Such is the case with today's conditions. We see how people are trying to patch them up, how they are applying all kinds of mixtures to improve things a little here and there and keep the old. But today's social life is like the skirt. The skirt can still be worn and this social life can continue for a while, but it will surely tear; it will not go on. And the fact that people somehow believe that it will continue is, ladies and gentlemen, a great illusion that people create for themselves by comfortably wanting to persist in the old and not wanting to approach what wants to be a real new creation, as the impulse of threefolding supposes.

It is not surprising that at first, after the idea of threefolding became known, the proletarian leaders not only ignored us, but even put all kinds of obstacles in our way. It is not surprising that everything that Mr. Molt has already described to you has happened. For today we see that the call for the threefold social order is countered by another threefold impulse. This other threefold impulse we may perhaps - even if it does not sound like the usual unctuous Christmas words - present to our souls. For it is precisely by looking a little into the present that we can find the strength that could really perhaps lead not only to the illusion of living in a possible situation as long as the skirt is not yet torn, but to acquiring a new skirt.

Today we see the world filled with a threefold order, but what a threefold order it is! You see, this fall in Dornach, in a more intensive way than was previously possible, we tried to show in a series of college courses how the spiritual life itself in science must be transformed, how it must be placed on its own feet if humanity is to be saved. We were able to show what should be taught in the future in the fields of the individual sciences, in the field of economics and practical life, so that the teachings can penetrate into life and become practice. What are our views on such matters today? Well, today we think entirely from the old conditions, and in this field in particular we are the most conservative of all. Of course, there are people who, in their own belief, have a very good opinion of the popularization of spiritual things. They found adult education colleges, adult education centers, public libraries, and so on. They make the people happy by bringing out among the people what has flourished in the universities and schools in those times that led us into the catastrophe. One feels extraordinarily comfortable when founding such libraries, such popular educational institutions among the people.

In this area, the impulse of threefolding that has emerged from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science must think quite differently. For anyone who is familiar with the circumstances is aware of something quite different. The situation is that the scientific approach and intellectual life cultivated in our schools today is of no use because it belongs to the declining world itself. And no social order, however well-intentioned, can do anything other than lead to decline and not to the dawn if it merely carries the intellectual life that is cultivated in schools today out into the world. For it is not a matter today of carrying out into the people that which is cultivated under the roofs of the university, that which is cultivated in secondary and primary schools, but rather of carrying a new spiritual life into the universities. A new spiritual life must first come into the universities, which can bring salvation to mankind. That is not the case there.

That is why, you see, spiritual science with its consequences, the threefold social order, is too radical for people today - too radical even for the proletarian leaders, who of course want to do nothing other than to conservatively place the old spiritual life in the heads of the people. What makes it difficult to work socially with such an endeavor?

There is the first link in today's threefold order, there is the sum of today's representatives of intellectual life, who, insofar as they deal with the matter at all, want to know nothing of such a renewal, but always emphasize that their old way of spreading Christianity must in turn become popular. And now, ladies and gentlemen, here is how the spiritual life as it is cultivated by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science was characterized by a representative of intellectual life who holds a professorship at a university: He said: First of all, for national reasons – these gentlemen are very fond of invoking national reasons – the people need the nourishing bread that comes from the pulpits, the nourishing bread that they are accustomed to seeing represented by the representatives of the confessions. Only then does it need the sweet. He describes what is attempted by spiritual science as sweet.

This is just one example. I could cite many more of the ways in which what is anthroposophical spiritual science is defamed from the lecterns of these teaching institutions. It is no wonder that the representatives of these teaching institutions react in this way to a movement that wants to bring something different under the roofs of these teaching institutions. For in a certain way, after all, the masters are stepped on, and then they squeal. That is the only explanation for this matter, after all, if one understands it. But it is necessary to understand that one needs an independent spiritual life in relation to the political and economic order. We need a spiritual life that works out of its own forces. And such a spiritual life, as far as it can be today, is anthroposophical spiritual science, through its inner essence, despite the fact that everywhere its throat is being cut. Anthroposophical spiritual science wants nothing more than to provide the pattern for the spiritual life that must come and that can only bring freedom to people. On the other hand, we see the other link in the present threefold social order: the representatives of intellectual life, who are today the most conservative people and would like to suppress all spiritual progress, especially that which can truly bring salvation.

And this first link in the present threefold division is joined by another, which is made up of politicians and statesmen and so on, who have still grown out of the old conditions - out of those old conditions that have brought about the terrible catastrophe over European civilization, through which millions and millions of people have been killed and crippled. They do not want to see that the only hope lies in the fact that new people are emerging from the broad masses, new people who have no connection with those who led into the catastrophe. And it is not the proletarian leaders who belong to these new people, because they are the ones who, like the others, only continue what led to the bloody catastrophes. No matter whether they are delivering speeches at labor meetings or sitting on such curule chairs and shouting abstractions into the world like the one on which Woodrow Wilson sat ; all these people, they want nothing that could bring salvation to humanity today, because they have completely outgrown the old with their thoughts, they only strive to preserve the old in some way.

One must not get hung up on words, my dear audience. Even the word “League of Nations,” which is now going around the world, should not create any illusions in us. A League of Nations can be something very good, something great and salutary, if it is rooted in those ideas that are needed to bring salvation to humanity, in the sense that I indicated when I had the honor of addressing you here almost two years ago. A League of Nations that would emanate from such people, who feel that way, would certainly be a League of Nations that could contribute something to the salvation of humanity. But such a League of Nations must proceed from quite new people, from people who grow out of the broad masses, who today may not even be noticed or, if they are noticed, are trampled to death – at least spiritually. But Leagues of Nations as they arise from the minds of old politicians, these are phrases, at most something Versailles or Geneva-like. And the Geneva spirit is nothing but a talking-shop that fails to take account of the realities of contemporary Europe, just as if one did not see the real conditions with one's eyes open. That is the second link in today's threefold division.

And the third link in today's tripartite division is made up of those people who want to hold on to the old economic system, who only ever think of galvanizing the old again. These are the people who have illusions about American credit to Europe, who have illusions about the possibility of improving the exchange rate situation according to old recipes, who do not want to see that the only thing that can bring salvation is what is called associative economic life in the sense of threefolding. I do not need to characterize it here today; it has often been characterized here and in other places.

We have a threefold order, but it is a threefold order of the negative, a threefold order of today's representatives of the spiritual life, of today's politicians and statesmen, of today's business people, who are working against the good of humanity. This threefold order must be replaced by the other threefold order. And anyone who thinks they can get through with small thoughts today is very much mistaken. Today it is only a matter of ideas that span the globe, while individual countries, especially after the war, have increasingly sought to erect Chinese and other walls around themselves. And while this pernicious game continues to be played, world conditions today cry out for the internationalization of economic life. And today we know that if we only want to ensure that there can be salvation under the influence of the internationality of economic life. Why keep putting a ban on anything that is to be introduced or exported? This only leads further into decline. Only the freedom of economic life is what can bring salvation and blessing to Europe and the whole of today's civilized world. And until the community of people in the world who have an understanding of the fact that such internationality must take hold, it will not get better. Today we have the task of bringing the impulse of threefolding into as many minds as possible.

When I left Switzerland last April to work here – called by friends in Stuttgart – in the sense of the threefold order, after the appeal “To the German People and to the Cultural World” was given to individuals to sign, a very well-known pacifist who had written extremely well during the war visited me. He did not want to put his name to the appeal without first having obtained more precise information about the intentions, which he thought he could not deduce from the appeal. The “key points” had not yet been published, and he told me, among other things, the following: “So you are going to Germany now. I can imagine that you are banking on the second revolution and you would like to pour into the Second German Revolution - the Second Russian Revolution was already over - that which is the meaning of threefolding. - I said: No, because firstly, I have no faith in the Second German Revolution; it will not be something acute, it will remain something chronic. And secondly, even if such a revolution should assert itself, not all the minds will have been removed from the same, which, despite all radicalism, want to continue to cultivate the old ideas among people. - I leave it to everyone to decide whether, in principle, both have not fully materialized.

Therefore, my dear attendees, I would like to say: He who today perceives the great Hydra, the snake that asserts itself as the false threefolding, he who sees this Hydra, this snake, in its real form, could already be pointed out that we in turn need a cure for the morbid conditions of civilized humanity. Therefore, it does us no good today to sit under the Christmas tree with its lights and just remember in an unctuous way what people used to celebrate when Christmas approached. Today we must turn our gaze, if I may say so, from the usual Christmas, from the Christmas of history, to the world Christmas. We must realize that we must live again in a mood in which we must see through what is there, that we must live again in a mood in which we acknowledge: Something must be born again, a spirit must embody itself within humanity. Today we can no longer imagine it figuratively, no, today we must imagine it in full reality. Today we do not need a frivolous radicalism, but we need the radicalism that was also present when Christianity entered the world. Today we need a world Christmas radicalism again. And we must say to ourselves: into this world, as it is around us – disintegrating, sick -, into this world something spiritual must come. And attention should be drawn to what should come as spiritual: to the threefold social order. This threefold social order should embody itself within humanity.

And so, as the world lies today, we can actually do no other than absorb the Christmas spirit into ourselves as a feeling for the future. One might say that the Christmas spirit as a world Christmas spirit has basically no truth today. It only has truth when we absorb it into ourselves as a sense of the future and let it permeate our hearts.

If we look at the Christmas tree in this way, we see its lights shining us into a future in which a possible Christmas will come again. For basically, we can only be in the Advent mood today, in the mood of expectation, and in that mood of expectation that demands deeds, devoted action from us, so that the World Christmas, that is, the outpouring of a new spiritual life into sick humanity, can happen again. We need the mood of Advent, and we need the mood that wants to awaken the strength within us to bring about this Christmas for the world.

But we will never come to this true Christmas mood if we just continue to recite the old, worn-out phrases about Christmas in an unctuous manner, but we will come to this true Christmas mood only if we look with clear spiritual eyes at what stands today as the false threefold division of the world, which is also a spiritual, a political-legal and an economic one. And we will only come to understand what the new Christmas can be for the world if each of us does our duty, if each of us seeks understanding of the world situation. We will only recognize it if we visualize the image that was so often presented to devout humanity in earlier times, so that this devout humanity felt much about this image: below the snake, the dragon, above the one who conquers this dragon. The snake, the dragon is there - the false threefold order is there, my dear attendees. From our hearts, from our intellects, from our understanding of the world situation, there must arise that which will crush the head of this snake. Then, when that happens, only then will Christmas be again. Therefore, today, anyone who lives sincerely and honestly in accordance with the aims of the threefold order cannot speak of anything other than the world Christmas that must be brought about through the efforts of people to achieve the right threefold order, as something healing, that crushes the head of the false, world-murderous threefold order, so that health may once again enter into the social life of humanity.

I would like to have said my admittedly inadequate words today so that the Christmas idea can live in us. But what they want is for these words to find their way to your hearts, so that this Christmas idea may arise in your hearts and the true threefolding may be present in the world, crushing the false threefolding, the dragon that is rearing its head ever more boldly and impudently in the world today.

In my lecture yesterday, I tried to indicate an important fact related to the Christ problem as a whole—a fact that is no doubt surprising. A great store of wisdom has in fact disappeared, and it is known today only through a few fragments. From one of these fragments, I cited certain passages to you yesterday from the beginning of the Book of Jeû.¹ We must indeed ask ourselves now if it possible that a store of wisdom that once existed can disappear completely. In other words, can the reasons for such a disappearance be completely external? You will recall the analogy I used: I said that it is possible to imagine that everything we publish today and that all our existing writings have been burned, so that only the writings of our opponents remain, and posterity can be reconstructed only from those records and not from what we have said. This is quite possibly what did occur. Nevertheless, this hypothesis cannot be sustained as-is and without qualification. Even if all the writings were to disappear, many of us would still be alive—at least, we could assume this possibility—and we know the content of those writings and would be able to communicate those truths without the help of the works of our adversaries, so that the store of wisdom would continue to grow and spread, in spite of everything.

To bring about a complete disappearance, it would in fact be necessary to eradicate, to a certain extent, the capacity to understand our writings, the ability to preserve them, and the possibility of communicating them from generation to generation. This must be what occurred at that time. It must have happened that people lost the capacity to understand such teachings as the Gnosis of Valentinus, for example, or the content of the Pistis Sophia manuscript, or the Book of Jeû, and so on. In fact, this is what happened.

We must vividly imagine to ourselves that, based on the broad foundation, so to speak, of that ancient inheritance—which had already fulfilled its purpose in the form of a primitive clairvoyance that then gradually grew dim and faded away—a higher form of knowledge evolved. It was nurtured by only the few who were initiated into the Mysteries, yet it was a widespread knowledge nevertheless. And we must imagine further that it was because of the gradual paralysis of the capacity to understand such things that this knowledge was not just forgotten, but it eventually disappeared. People simply no longer had the capacity to understand such teachings. Only this could bring about such a complete loss of a treasure of wisdom.

Thus, we may indeed say that, when we look back at the time just before the period following the Mystery of Golgotha, we can see how ancient capacities disappear, far and wide, and how something new develops out of entirely new and fresh forces. We may say without hesitation that, as human evolution approached the Mystery of Golgotha, we can see a gradual darkening and disappearance of a certain view and way of thinking, which had a spiritual quality and would have enabled human beings to understand the coming of Christ into the world as a spiritual being. But this form of knowledge, as we said, had disappeared.

As a result, at the very time when the Christ united with earthly evolution, humankind lost the kind of knowledge that might have enabled people to understand, in a true and profound way, the nature of the Christ being. This is a very important fact. Furthermore, I have already indicated, several times, something very significant. I stated that the announcement of Christ's coming was not itself a new revelation, made known through the Mystery of Golgotha; in the Mysteries, the Christ had already been mentioned as the “coming one.” There were special teachings in the Mysteries that proclaimed the coming of Christ. One viewed the Christ being, of course, in the light of a past spiritual wisdom, but these Mysteries had gradually degenerated, so that, when the Christ did come, people were less able than ever to speak, as human beings, about the Christ. This is evident not only from all that I have just explained, but also from what remained alive in the souls of those who tried to conceive of the Christ Mystery out of a fresh, new impulse.

Thus, during the very first centuries of the Christian era, we find great spirits arising, such as Clemens of Alexandria, for example, and Origenes—very lofty spirits, both of them. If we want to describe them from one perspective—Clemens, as well as Origenes, who came after the Gnostics when Gnosis itself was already waning—we must say that they did in fact strive for this knowledge. They asked themselves: What is the truth behind the Mystery of Golgotha? On the one hand, we are concerned with the Christ (they still knew this, of course); the Christ can be understood only as a spiritual being connected with spiritual and suprasensory impulses. This Christ descends from cosmic spiritual spheres. They could no longer comprehend how the ancient Gnosis had been able to understand the Christ, but they knew that he could be understood, as a spiritual being, only through spiritual faculties. This was what they knew about the Christ.

On the other hand, they viewed Jesus as a historical personality. For them, the coming of Jesus was a historical fact. Them might have said: A number of years ago, in a certain part of the Middle East, a man named Jesus was born; he carried the Christ, and God lived in that human being. For them, this was the great problem. They thought: During the course of historical evolution, we are concerned with a historical personality; but in the realm of spiritual knowledge, we are concerned with the Christ. How should we conceive the union of these two? Thus we see great spirits like Clemens of Alexandria and Origenes working and struggling with the problem of how the Christ could have lived in the man Jesus.

Now, let us first consider Clemens of Alexandria, the head of the catechetical school of Alexandria, where those who wished to become Christian teachers were trained. When we consider this significant individual, we find something in his teachings that we may describe in this way: The Christ belongs, of course, to the forces that participated in the creation of the earth; he belongs to the spiritual world; he entered earthly evolution through the body of Jesus of Nazareth. In this way, Clemens of Alexandria looked up, first of all, to the Christ as a spiritual being and tried to comprehend him in spiritual realms. But Clemens also knew something else, which we have emphasized often—that the Christ had, in fact, always existed for human beings, but not in the earthly sphere. The only ones who could reach him were those who had developed, through the Mysteries, forces that enabled them to leave the physical body. When human beings left their physical bodies through forces acquired in the Mysteries and ventured into the spiritual realms, they were able to recognize the Christ and felt that he was the “coming one.” Clemens of Alexandria knew this. He knew that the ancient Mysteries spoke of the Christ as the coming one, who was not yet united with earthly evolution. He expressed this by saying that human beings were, of course, inspired to expect the Christ.

Clemens of Alexandria went so far as to say that, especially at two particular points in the spiritual evolution of humanity, something was nurtured as a kind of preparation for Christ's coming. He said, on the other hand, that this took place through Moses and the prophets. What came into the world through Moses and the prophets, said Clemens, was a preparation—humankind first needed to become acquainted with what came through Moses and the prophets, so that they might, through personal experience, come to feel they had found the Christ. This was the concept they had to form.

So we see that Clemens knew nothing about the old Gnostic wisdom—or, at least, he did not use it. But Clemens designated what entered human capacity through Moses and the prophets as a “preparation.” Then, as the second turning point, or “preparation” (and this is very significant), Clemens placed Greek philosophy—Plato and Aristotle—at the side of Moses and the prophets. He said, approximately, that Moses and the prophets as well as the philosophers prepared humanity for the event that took place with the Mystery of Golgotha.

Origenes said, on the other hand, that we are dealing with the Christ—the Christ who can be grasped as a spiritual being with the aid of spiritual forces. And we are dealing with the historical Jesus, who in fact once existed as a real person in the sensory world. How can these two be united, the God and the human being? How does the “God human” come to be? Origenes, accordingly, constructed a view that said: It is impossible for a god, without preparation, to live within an ordinary physical human body; a specially prepared soul, therefore, must have lived in Jesus so that his soul could mediate between God and the human being and might united the God, as a pure spiritual being, with physicality.

Thus, Origenes brought in the soul element and, within Jesus Christ, distinguished between the God, the pure Pneuma-being of pure spirit being—the psyche, or soul—and the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth. He tried to imagine how the Christ could dwell within Jesus of Nazareth. He no longer possessed the early Gnosis, which would enable him to imagine the dwelling of Christ on earth and the union of the Christ with earthly evolution. It was necessary to make up an understanding out of completely new and fresh elements, and his efforts went toward achieving this. So we see that, right at the time when Christ as a real being united with earthly evolution, human beings had the greatest possible difficulty in understanding this fact; the capacity for such understanding had never been so limited.

Clemens of Alexandria still preserved at least some idea of why this was so. He wondered what it was that inspired humankind in the ancient Mysteries. He thought that they were inspired through the Christ's influence, although from suprasensory worlds while they were out of their physical bodies. Clemens of Alexandria expressed this clearly when he said that Christ sent the angels to humankind. Indeed, he said openly that, when the Old Testament mentions the appearance of an angel, this means that the angel was sent by the Christ. He states explicitly that, when Yahweh appears to Moses as the burning bush, it is in reality the Christ who appears in this earthly, soul-spiritual manifestation. Clemens of Alexandria thus states clearly that, in the past, before the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ appeared to human beings through angels. If people developed the capacity to understand the message of the angel, they were capable of standing as disembodied initiates in the presence of the Christ and in the presence of the spiritual world.

Thus Clemens of Alexandria was still able to go as far as this. Further, he said—and this was also part of the knowledge retained by Clemens—that clearly, over the course of time, the Christ passed from the nature of angel to the “Son nature”; he became “Son.” Previously, he was able to manifest and reveal himself through angels or as a host, or multitude, of angels. When it so pleased him, he appeared to one person in one angelic form, and to another as a different angel. Thus he appeared to human beings in many and various forms. Later, however, he appeared in the one form as the “Son.”

Here we come to a very important element, which I must ask you to note carefully, because it is extremely important. Clemens of Alexandria still held to the view that the Christ already existed before the Mystery of Golgotha in the spiritual realms. The Christ had already reached the point where he could reveal himself through angels, or messengers. But now, he came even further by being able to fulfill himself as the Son. His ability to fulfill his mission as the Son has the greatest imaginable importance. What was it that now entered human understanding?

When we go through the entire ancient Gnosis, we find a peculiar trait. If, for example, I were to outline it in the form of a diagram, I might say something like this: The Gnosis conceives, in evolution, the existence of a human “person” as proceeding from the Father—from the primal Father, the so-called Stillness, or primal Spirit. These ancient Gnostics indicated thirty different stages, and named them “Aeons,” and now I could name thirty of these. And then comes the second current, or stream. Whereas the first stream is spiritual, they also spoke of a second stream that belongs to the realm of soul. Within these streams they saw the Christ and the Sophia as the two principal Aeons, and as the source of all being. Then there were numerous other Aeons besides. Moreover, the Gnostics indicated yet a third stream—that of the Demiurge and matter. These all united and formed humankind. It is possible to form such an outline out of the way those Gnostics thought. Such concepts as theirs are not entirely unreal, because human beings are complicated. In a lecture once, I explained how many groups, or stages, containing seven parts make up the human being, our friends were very surprised to hear that so many differentiations must be looked for in the human being.² Yet it is just these differentiations that remind us of what the Gnostics, from their perspective, knew already.

On the other hand, we always find, when we approach the Gnosis, one particular point that impresses us—that the concept of time plays a very minor role. Gnostic ideas may be expressed spatially; the role of time as an idea is unimportant. Or we could say that Gnostic understanding is not capable of understanding it completely. And to this extent we may indeed call it progress from the Gnosis to Clemens of Alexandria. Although the whole encompassing fullness of spiritual wisdom had been lost, it was nevertheless a step forward that led to Clemens of Alexandria, since he brought the concept of time into the evolution of the Christ. He taught that the Christ had already existed earlier—that he had previously revealed himself through angels and later on as the Son; this was his evolutionary course.

Thus, the concept of development, or evolution, was introduced. This, you can see, is the significant point. Indeed, we cannot emphasize too often that the development of civilization in the West occurred in order to bring an understanding of the concept of time to the human worldview in the right way. This is what is so important, so radically important—to view the course of evolution and to realize that the Christ was first able to manifest only through angels, and that afterward, when he passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, he is able to manifest as the Son. Through the angels, he is the messenger of something outside the world. It is true that it permeates the world completely, but to understand it correctly, we must nevertheless recognize that it comes from outside the world, as the messenger. Later, however, he appears as Son; he imbues all things.

Just as the Son is one blood—one with the Father in the physical world—we must also conceive the spirit as one and the same being with the Father in the spiritual world. To be a Son is something other than being merely an angel. So, when this being reveals itself as Son, it is an evolutionary progress, in contrast to the earlier manifestations, whereby he was able to appear only as an angel, or messenger. There was, as it were, a kind of understanding of the Christ that went further than the understanding of the ancient Gnosis. Yet, the effects of the Gnosis were needed in order to say even what Clemens could say. When the Gnosis gradually disappeared altogether, it was no longer possible to say even what Clem- ens of Alexandria and Origenes had said. People became increasingly familiar with those impulses that belonged to a later period: purely materialistic impulses.

So it came about that the teachings of Origenes were condemned. They were pronounced heretical. The element in them that caused them to be declared heretical was the fact that people wished to renounce any form of understanding that came from humanity itself and its own forces. This was what they wanted to renounce; they felt that such an understanding was no longer possible. And how do matters appear to us now? What aspect must they assume for us? We see, in fact, that an ancient form of spiritual wisdom had established itself extensively on the foundation of ancient clairvoyance. It was there, but it gradually disappeared. Contained in this spiritual wisdom—though it dealt with a supra- sensory being—was wisdom related to the Christ. Just at the time when the Christ descended to earth, however, the wisdom had disappeared. The real Christ was now united with the earth; knowledge about the Christ, however, had disappeared by this time.

Here you have an example, on a grand scale, that I must ask you to please consider in the right way. We can cast our glance over the earth that was known to humanity at that time—the earth as it was before the Mystery of Golgotha. The further back we go, the more knowledge we find about the Christ, who must be thought of as existent in suprasensory realms. The farther back we go, the more knowledge we find, but it is knowledge that can be communicated only through angels. This constitutes evolution. This knowledge, this view of Christ, is made known to many people. The Christ lived as the inspiration of many human beings: evolution.

This knowledge slowly fades away and disappears, and its influence weakens. And in one being, Jesus of Nazareth, we find everything concentrated that had previously been distributed among many. Imagine, in the course of evolution, a drop of the inner being of the Christ as living in a priest of the Mysteries, another drop in a second priest, yet another drop in a third, and so on. In the case of each of these initiates, you would find that, when he went out of his body—when his spirit abandoned his body—he had some portion of the Christ within him. The Christ is thus multiplied in them. All of this disappears, because everything that had once been distributed is drawn together and concentrated in a single point, in the body of Jesus of Nazareth: involution.

Involution is the very principle or being that was taken away from all the others and appeared in one body. Thus, we see that what had lived in evolution in a distributed form had to disappear from the earth by becoming concentrated into one point—the body of Jesus of Nazareth. This is the important fact. Evolution ceases within the most significant involution. Now begins the time, therefore, when the Christ himself lives with the earth, but when the knowledge of the Christ no longer lives in the earth; knowledge of the Christ must evolve anew.

At this point, the very difficulties we spoke of appeared. On the one hand, we have Jesus of Nazareth, and on the other, we have the Christ. Keep in mind that the ancient wisdom concerning the connections of things in human beings themselves were now completely lost. During that entire period, there was no longer the slightest knowledge of anything concerning humankind. Not until now are we beginning again to differentiate in the human being our physical body, ether body, sentient soul, and so on. Only now are we beginning this. Now, in a single individual, we again differentiate between the physical earthly part, which continues the line of heredity, and the higher spiritual part, which has descended again from spiritual worlds.

Origenes did not know this, nor did Clemens of Alexandria. They did not know about the spiritual soul and the physical part in each individual human being who walks on the earth. This was why they found it so difficult to understand the single members of the being of Jesus Christ. The knowledge related to the Christ became more and more at variance, and it is infinitely important for an understanding of our own age to realize how all of this, in turn, influences our own time, inasmuch as it was necessary for the knowledge of spiritual science to appear today. It is extremely important to keep in mind this separation of Jesus and the Christ. This is a very serious and important matter. And we encounter in a myriad of forms.

The Christmas event was entirely unknown at that time. It entered human hearts only gradually. This was the outer aspect: People came to know in images what had occurred in Palestine; only gradually, with the aid of dramatic performances, did they begin to form an idea of what took place there. This was the aspect, I might say, of the Jesus Mystery. We have seen the Christmas plays performed for us here. We could still feel something of the Christ in one of them, the second. And we could feel Jesus in his purity of form in the first play, which is so primitive and simple. We could say that the child Jesus—the first appearance of “Jesus”—gradually conquered human hearts. Around the middle of the Middle Ages, we find that people began to look up to the child; before then, Christians participated in the Mass and heard about the Mystery of Christ. They heard that he had passed through the experience of death, about St. Paul's teachings, and so on, but the Bible, as we know, was not allowed to become popular; it was kept entirely in the hands of the priests. Believers were expected to participate in the Mass, which was, moreover, celebrated in Latin. But there was no real participation in the events of the holy rite itself. The essence of the Gospels conquered human hearts and souls only very gradually. So it happened that only after the middle of the Middle Ages could such plays portraying the appearance of Jesus and so on be given to ordinary people. Today, the actual view that we maintain is that the Mystery of Golgotha once took place and that, after that event, people knew something of this Mystery of Golgotha. Yet, what they really knew was simply this: Christ had died on the cross; it was mainly the Easter event that people felt.

We must keep in mind that all of this took place at the same time when mystics such as Tauler, Meister Eckhardt, and others were seeking the Christ through mysticism. Thus, on the one hand, we have the first appearance of the Christmas plays; Jesus is sought in the most external form possible—in the form of a direct physical portrayal—whereas the mystics sought the Christ. They worked to develop the soul to such an extent that they could experience the Christ arising within them; they sought to apprehend the Christ in completely changed form, within the soul, a Christ far removed from the world, existing as pure spirit. Mysticism, on the one hand, and the Christmas plays on the other—Jesus and the Christ being sought simultaneously along two different and widely separated paths. What was a theoretical difficulty in the case of Origenes—the impossibility of uniting the Christ with Jesus—appears directly before us out in the villages. There, among the simple folk, Jesus is shown as a child, whereas the deep- natured mystics looked for the Christ by trying to guide their own souls to an inner experience—to inner contact, so to speak—of the Christ.

But where can we find the connecting link? Where is it? Events follow their course, side by side. Just consider the wide gulf between the childlike gaze of the villagers and what they see in the Christmas plays and the deep mysticism of a Meister Eckhardt or a Johannes Tauler. And yet, the beginnings of these Christmas plays actually appear at the same time. In fact, mysticism also continues to live. And today, in our own time, just think what the whole event of the Mystery of Golgotha has become for many theologians. Among the most advanced theologians, what is it that draws their attention? They consider that, once upon a time, at the beginning of our era, a man was born in Nazareth, or Bethlehem, or somewhere else—a chosen one, chosen especially to experience gradually within himself the human connection with the spiritual world. He was a noble man, the noblest of all—so noble, in fact, that one might say that he was almost ... but here, you see, they are somewhat at a loss. Here they are not so sure of themselves. What is there to add to the fact that he was viewed absolutely as a god during the evolutionary course of Christianity? And so they turn backward and forward, until all the theories and teachings of Euken and Harnack come along. Isn't it true that they cannot understand it al all, yet they wish, in one way or another, to appear smart and to be able to view Jesus as something special—and to be able to conceive of the Christ. Then they consult the Gospels, and as modern persons, of course, they are ashamed to admit the truth of the miracles, so they struck out whatever can be struck out, and construct from the Gospels something as natural as possible—something that may be explained away.

Then we come to the event of Jerusalem and the death on the cross. Theologians can pursue things as far as this death, you see, but they are unable to go so far as the resurrection. And then we see examples such as Harnack's statement that this resurrection, the grave from which Jesus Christ supposedly arose—indeed, this Easter Mystery—allows us to penetrate only the knowledge that this Easter Mystery took place in the garden, near the Place of the Skulls. It was there that the Easter Mystery arose, and the idea of the resurrection comes from there. We are expected to hold to this, without concerning ourselves with what actually occurred there, because the conviction of the resurrection proceeded from there.

This is indeed very strange, is it not? If you read Harnack's book The Essence of Christianity, you will find this extraordinary idea of the resurrection. I once pointed this out in a certain city at a meeting of the Giordano Bruno Union by saying that this is a strange thought indeed. If you wish to solve the problem of the resurrection with such a statement, it is better to leave the actual event untouched and to point our simply that the resurrection belief—the belief in the Easter Mystery—arose from that grave. A certain gentleman who was present objected by saying that Harnack could not have written this, since this would in fact be almost Roman Catholic—a Roman Catholic superstition. It would be no different than believing that the holy garment of Treves had some hidden meaning. This would indeed be superstition, and Harnack could not have written it. Yet it is a fact that he did write it, and since I did not have the book handy, I had no choice but to send that gentleman a post card the next day, stating that the passage could be found on such and such a page. This are the sort of thing that leads to many difficulties. People are at a loss when they try to find the path leading from Jesus to the Christ. Someone once said to me, “We modern theologians can no longer do anything with a Christology. The only thing that is of any real use to us is a ‘Jesuology.’” And it was that same person, not I, who added this statement: “What a pity that the name Jesuits is already taken, since the followers of modern theology really ought to be called ‘Jesuits.’” Please note that it was not I who said this, but a modern theologian.

Now this is one side of the historical picture. The other side is this: A number of modern theologians are, in turn, holding more to the Christ. They study the Gospels, but they do not interpret certain passages in the Gospels, as do the other theologians I've mentioned. They do not speak of what one is able to believe, as a rational person might believe about another human being, even if that human being is divine. Yet, when describing this individual as a divine being, they are not at all clear in their minds about how far they should go in their application of divine status. “A noble man,” they say, more noble than Socrates, certainly, but here they go no further.

Thus we have the one class of people, the “Jesuolgians,” since it would be difficult indeed to apply to them the name theologians. The word theology means “wisdom of God,” but it is just this godly element that they wish to eliminate. And then there is the other group, who take things more seriously and who find, after studying certain Gospel passages, that it is impossible to view the one who pronounced such words as an ordinary human being. There are passages in the Gospels, as we know, that cannot, if we are honest, be so lightly attributed to a mere human being. Furthermore, such people take the story of the resurrection seriously. They consider themselves “Christologians,” in contrast to the “Jesulogians.” At the same time, they come to yet another conclusion. For example, just read the book Ecce Deus, among others. In this book, they say, “If you read the Gospels honestly, it is impossible to believe that they refer to an ordinary human being. They speak of a God—of a true and real God.” Hence, these people, for their part, lose Jesus; they lose him very seriously, because here they say, “Throughout the Gospels, certainly, we find the mention of God; but God can not possibly have existed—in fact, he could not have lived on earth. Therefore, we must hold on to the Christ. But the Christ is the one of whom people have said that he never lived on earth.” Christology without Jesuology; this is the other direction. Yet these two directions find no way to unite. This is true today; those who speak of the Christ have lost Jesus, and those who speak of Jesus have lost the Christ. Christ has become an unreal god, and Jesus an unreal man. And it would have to continue this way, inevitably, if something new could not be added.

The new element to be added must be spiritual science, which is capable of understanding anew how the Christ could live in Jesus. In fact, one of the most important points in the spiritual scientific teaching is this: It can lead us to understand how the Christ, by way of the two Jesus children, could actually become the one who assumed the position at the center of earthly and human evolution. Spiritual science can do this, because it has a new vision of what the human being really is and how the spirit, soul, and body are united in the human being. Consequently, if we build on this, we can understand once again how the Christ united with Jesus. This is complicated, of course, and it is not easy to understand. Nevertheless, it can be understood. You will thus be able to see how what humankind has lost can, with the help of spiritual science, be built up again from its original source. This is also true of our comprehension of the Mystery of Golgotha. When the Christ appeared in the world, it was impossible for people to understand him. Such understanding can be acquired only gradually. His achievements took the form of actual facts. The points of departure that can lead us to an understanding can be found everywhere. Even the simplest Christmas play can help us find such points.

What do such plays show us? So far as the Paradise Plays are concerned, the following fact is placed before us: A human being enters the world, and we realize, merely through incidental occurrences, that this human being is Jesus. We enter the world as children. I said that the Paradise Play—the beginning of earthly evolution—was connected with this, the Mystery of Golgotha.

Certainly, we must consider the fact that, at the beginning of earthly evolution, human beings were exposed to luciferic temptation. Consequently, their normal progress of evolution was changed. Thus we are faced, symbolically, with Adam cast out of paradise; his being is other than what it was destined to be before luciferic temptation. How does this manifest? Imagine that Lucifer had never approached humankind, and that human beings had lived without the luciferic impulse. In that case, human beings would have lived in a different way in their ether body. When we pass through the portal of death, we still retain our ether body, and then we cast it off. Nevertheless, this ether body more or less continues its existence. As a result of luciferic temptation, it caries the impressions of everything we do and think. We know that human beings die; that they pass through the portal of death; that the physical body is surrendered to the elements; that, after a few days, the ether body detaches itself from the human being; and that human beings then continue along whatever path them must take. At the same time, in this etheric part are the impressions of what the ether body had become as a result of thinking, feeling, and actions, in an inevitable accordance with luciferic temptation.

Now imagine the earth. The human physical body enters this earth; it is given over to the earthly elements, but the ether body remains connected with the earth. Thus, we have the ether bodies of human beings; they are present in the atmosphere of the earth. And they are different from what they would have been had the luciferic temptation never taken place. Everything I've said thus far about ether bodies in general refers, of course, to these ether bodies. But what I am saying today also refers to them. So we may repeat: Human beings are embedded in the earth; what we leave behind on the earth—all that our ether body has become during earthly life—has become more dry, more “woody,” than it would have become had the luciferic temptation not occurred. More wood-like, drier—in fact, this difference does exist. Imagine that the luciferic temptation had never taken place; after death, human beings would leave behind a far more rejuvenated ether body, a much “greener” ether body, as it were. Because of the luciferic temptation, human beings leave behind a far more dried-up ether body than would have otherwise been the case.

This was expressed in the legend that tells us a dried-up Tree of Paradise arose from Adam's grave. But what lives in the earth actually lived before the Mystery of Golgotha in the human ether body, infected by Lucifer. It was precisely this element into which the body of Jesus of Nazareth entered as a healer, or as a “phantom,” as I explained in my lectures at Karlsruhe.³ Imagine that Adam's grave—Adam surrendered as a physical body to the earthly elements. Arising from his grave is the dried-up ether body, the representative of the human past that was infected by Lucifer and remains intact after death. This is, at the same time, the tree upon which one may be crucified. In fact, such a crucifixion actually does take place when the “phantom” of Jesus of Nazareth remains behind on earth after the Mystery of Golgotha, and through it unites with the earth. This is expressed in the legend that tells us this tree was handed down from generation to generation and became, in turn, the cross on Golgotha. This is a pictorial view that corresponds to the fact—that, through the crucifixion, the phantom of Jesus of Nazareth united with what lived in the earth etherically, as a totality of ether bodies infected by Lucifer. Those bodies were, of course, scattered, rarified, and dissolved, but they were nevertheless existent in the form of forces. This is very significant and infinitely profound fact that we must keep in mind, and it illuminates for us the mysteries of the earth.

But what is it, in fact, that brings about our connection with the ether body infected by Lucifer? It is the fact that we enter the physical world as children. We still do not, of course, find the whole answer in that point were one becomes a child, because if we look with the right feeling, we see in the child a being free of Lucifer. And if we are able to do this—to look at a child with the right feeling, seeing how one enters the world—we can see the human relationship to the Christ.

This, it was expected, would be the feeling experienced by those seeing Jesus thus portrayed in the Christmas plays: They were expected to feel what I have described in the first pages of my little book on the progress of the human being and humanity.⁴ There I spoke of the first three years of human life and about our entrance into the world. If the same thing that permeates the human being during those first years were to permeate one in the middle of life (as I mentioned in the book), one would have some idea of the way the Christ lived in Jesus. This opportunity to see something in children that is not yet infected by Lucifer is also possible when we see the Christmas plays.

Now let's consider what all of this means. It is indeed tremendously important when we look at the child. In that little book I explained that during our earliest years we are far wiser than we are later on—although unconsciously—because we must then build up the body; later, we can no longer do that. We are far smarter and wiser than we are later on, and we are much better at penetrating our human nature, but we do not yet posses the Luciferic element. In working on ourselves inwardly in this way, during our earliest infancy—before that time we can recall later on—we work on the most delicate shaping of the body, and we work according to infinitely wise laws. Once Lucifer and Ahriman have permeated our knowledge later on, we haven't the faintest notion of those laws. While we are at work within this infant being, we are free of everything we enter later on, when we experience the world through the body; we are still unhampered by all differences, even by the difference of the sexes. We do not live during early infancy within the male or female element; we are not yet involved in the differences created by social position and race; we are not yet involved in national differences. We are human beings, pure and simple. We are then, in reality, within the same element inhabited by those who face one another in war, impelled by something they experience externally for the first time: hatred.

The fact that it is possible for human beings in the world to face one another in hatred, just because they belong to different nationalities, is something that develops through forces into which we enter through the connection with our physical body. Before acquiring such a connection through the physical body, children still live in an element that transcends all national and social differences. They live in an element where all souls could live, no matter where they were born on earth. Consider this: Human beings may face one another as bitter enemies and kill one another, yet those who have killed may pass through the portal of death, mutually united in the Christ who belongs to them all, the Christ in whom they live, if they have remained unaffected by the differences that exist among humankind. What makes people fact one another in hatred is something that they acquire only through the physical body; but this has no connection whatsoever with what lies outside the physical body.

Our age has much to learn—especially this age. It must find its way back to veneration for the infant Jesus, when he is portrayed as a child and not yet as one who has entered the element that brings differences among human beings, leading them into conflict and strife. It is only when their experiences change human beings from the child, about whom we are told at Christmas, that war and strife arise. It is human beings themselves who are portrayed in the Christmas play, human beings as they really are in their connection with cosmic powers—but portrayed in such a way that it reveals, in a unique way and on the physical level, something that does not become involved in strife; it is something that may even be carried, in a similar way, in the hearts of those who are fighting a physical battle to the death with one another.

It is profoundly significant that this is presented to humankind in particular relation to the “Nathan” Jesus Child. We connect with the side of our being, so to speak, through which we enter the world, without the slightest trace of discrimination, because we have not yet become involved in distinguishing nationality and so forth. We develop such discrimination only through our life in connection with the physical body. The Jesus idea, which is expressed fully only in the Jesus child, unites with the Christ idea, which is fulfilled when human beings are able go clearly recognize the spiritual also in Jesus as a man, when he was between thirty and thirty-three years of age—in other words, the Christ being. In a twofold way, through the “Nathan” Jesus and the “Solomon” Jesus, a body is prepared, which is able to remain apart from all that causes discrimination among human beings. The Christ is able to reveal himself only in such a body.⁵

Thus we see, according to spiritual science (and I have explained this in a similar way in my little book on the progress of the individual and humanity), the coalescence of the Jesus idea and the Christ idea. This is the greatest, most meaningful human need of our time. Until now, human beings have had a Christmas festival and an Easter festival, but these two festivals remained unrelated. Easter is a Christ festival, and Christmas a Jesus festival. Easter and Christmas eventually become related as we gain the ability to understand how the Christ and Jesus are interrelated. It is spiritual science that builds the bridge between the Christmas festival and the Easter festival. From the simple “Shepherd Play,” a bridge will lead us to the finest attainable comprehension if we cultivate spiritual science to the degree that we have the mentality of the shepherds rather than that of the innkeepers. The contrast between materialism and spiritualism is wonderfully described in the characters of the innkeepers and the shepherds. In fact, the great problem of our time is whether we wish to be innkeepers or shepherds. Many of today's events may be traced to the fact that people prefer to be innkeepers. The innkeeper nature is widespread in the world today; we must again work to become the shepherds. Naturally, there are many disbelievers, even among the shepherds. When one of the shepherds says, “I think I see a light yonder” (which means, “I perceive something of a spiritual nature.), there will always be another shepherd who will be slow to agree, saying it is just a fantasy.

There is one detail, however, that must not be ignored. Of course, we must be able to distinguish between the nature of an innkeeper and a shepherd; after all, don't innkeepers surround us on all sides? Wherever we go, they surround us, yet we convince ourselves that we are shepherds. This is natural, but we must not ignore this: We must investigate, at least in a small way, the innkeeper's nature within ourselves, and not view ourselves too certainly as the shepherds. We must occasionally ask ourselves, “Are we already able to see the approaching light, which will proclaim what must come through the new spiritual science?” We should cultivate inwardly everything that can keep alive the inner feeling for celebrating Christmas in our hearts through this new spiritual direction; this feeling will help us seek the light in the midst of darkness. We must seek and truly be willing to seek, however, in the right way. While we are seeking, we must truly have the feeling that we cannot reach our goal by trying only once; we must return again and again as the shepherds did, for they promised that they could come again and would not be satisfied to come only once.This is a fact; yet, people can become shepherds if they can begin now to develop within themselves the side of their nature that is not derived from earthly experience—if they can find, instead, a connection with what they brought to earth with them in their innermost being from the heavenly realms. People today stand far too firmly within the “house” where they can get what the innkeeper has to offer—what was brought from the earthly realms, and this can be evaluated only through earthly discrimination. On the other hand, those who still have a certain relationship with everything spiritual that surges and pulses through the world—those who have kept their shepherd nature—will be able to find the paths; they are able to discover that, in reality, ordinary knowledge finds only the outer appearance. People will gradually begin to understand Christmas when they learn to distinguish the innkeeper's nature from that of the shepherd, and when they come to realize how predominant the innkeeper's nature is today.

There is still much to be learned through the simple Christmas play, and because of this it seems to me a good idea to cultivate among us and to experience the Christmas mystery in this simplest of all forms. There are many and diverse hard battles ahead, my dear friends. They must be faced in the near future by just this sort of spiritual scientific work. To find the path, we must truly learn to be shepherds through spiritual understanding of the Christmas mystery—possessing all the humility of the shepherds, but at the same time, all the wisdom in seeking that belongs to the shepherds who are united with the universe. Let us engrave this in our hearts and souls at this Christmastime, so that we may continue to become seeking shepherds, and so that we may eventually learn to find what is holy within the human soul, just as it was found in the ordinary, everyday atmosphere of the simple folk. I have explained how this most sacred form of Christmas play arose, little by little, out of a carnival holiday mood, not from any sort of holy recreation. If we look for the spiritual in connection with what the Christmas plays show us, we find it in the right way as shepherds, not as innkeepers who have already lost their connection with the Christmas child, just as the play shows us symbolically. This is sorely needed in our age, when materialism has conquered such broad and far-reaching areas of life, both outer and within the human life of feeling. There, a spiritual worldview finds it difficult even to rediscover the right words—in contrast to the misused words that people use to express themselves—so that it may say what the right words mean.

• 1. The two books of Jeû are contained in the Bruce Codex. The first is considered speculative and cosmological, the second practical and related to overcoming the hostile world powers and securing salvation by practicing certain rites. The latter book is called “The Book of the Great Logos according to the mystery.” See G.R.S. Mead's introduction to Pistis Sophia (Spiritual Science Library, 1984, p. xxxv). The Bruce Codex was translated into German by C. Schmidt in 1892 and is probably the source quoted by Rudolf Steiner.
• 2. This reference is to a course of lectures by Rudolf Steiner in Oslo, Norway, June 2–12, 1912, Man in the Light of Occultism, Theosophy, and Philosophy, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1964 (GA 137).
• 3. Steiner refers to his 11 lectures in Karlsruhe, October 4–14, 1911 (GA 131), From Jesus to Christ, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1973.
• 4. See The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity: Some Results of Spiritual-Scientific Research into Human History and Development, written in 1911 from 3 lectures, Copenhagen, June 1911 (GA 15), Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1991.
• 5. For more about Steiner's views on the two Jesus children, see his course of 10 lectures in Basel, September 1909 (GA 114): According to Luke: The Gospel of Compassion and Love Revealed, Anthroposophic Press, Great Barrington, MA, 2001.

Translated by Steiner Online Library

Dear attendees!

As always before these performances, I would like to take the liberty of saying a few words today, first about our eurythmic art, for those of the honored audience who were not present at earlier performances.

Goethe said of his artistic sensibilities: When man is placed at the summit of nature, he feels himself to be a whole nature, bringing forth a higher nature from within himself by extracting order, measure, harmony and meaning from all phenomena and ultimately rising to the production of the work of art. It is out of this spirit, out of true Goetheanism, that our eurythmic art was born. I do not wish to give you a theoretical discussion in these few words, for it is self-evident that something truly artistic needs no explanation but must commend itself and be understood directly in the act of presentation. But the way in which an attempt is being made here to create an art form must be discussed in order to be understood.

They will show all kinds of movements performed by people and groups of people. You will see the way individuals within the groups relate to one another. All the movements that appear are born out of the human organism and the interaction between people. They are not contrived or arbitrary in any way, but are a real, silent language.

The development of this art is based on a deeper - to use Goethe's expression - [sensual-transcendental insight into the human being and its connection with the world. With such a sensory-supersensory insight into the human being, one can recognize which lawful movements the human larynx and its neighboring organs carry out when a person reveals the sounding, audible language or singing of himself. It is precisely those things to which we do not pay attention when we listen to spoken language, the internal movement and especially the movement patterns, that have been studied here according to Goethe's principle of metamorphosis, according to which what is formed or takes place in one organ system can be transferred to other organ systems or to the whole organism. According to this deeply significant law of Goethe's metamorphosis, what otherwise underlies movements or the potential for movement is quite naturally transferred to human speech, [via] the movements of the limbs of the human being in the world. And this is precisely how the possibility arises that the sight of such a mute language must have an artistic effect. For what is the artistic in human beings actually based on? It is based on the fact that we receive impressions of the life of nature and of human beings without the abstract imagination, or imagination at all, mixing into these impressions.

In ordinary language – even when expressed poetically – two elements of the human organism are embodied: on the one hand, the element of thought, which in more advanced, civilized language has already taken on a strongly conventional character, and on the other hand, the more subconscious will element, the emotional element, is at the root of it. If one can eliminate the thought element from speech, which crystallizes into the tone of the heard language and thus does not allow the heard language to be completely artistic, then one achieves something that can be believed to be particularly artistic. And so all the movements of speech are transferred to the human limbs; but only the will element is incorporated. The human being as a whole expresses itself, not through sharp gestures as in other dance or similar arts, but the human being as a whole expresses itself in a lawful way.

Therefore, there is nothing arbitrary, nothing merely pantomime or mimic in this eurythmy. If two people or groups of people in completely different places express one and the same piece of poetry or one and the same piece of music through this formal language of eurythmy, there is no more individuality in the two different performances than there is in the performance of one and the same Beethoven sonata by two different pianists. All arbitrariness is avoided. There are inner laws in the sequence of movements that could not be otherwise, because they are derived from the essence of nature itself. Just as the harmony and melody of music have an inner lawfulness, so here everything that is revealed in the movements has an inner, musical lawfulness. We are dealing here with a visible musical art.

Thus you will find many things presented in two ways, either at the same time through music and eurythmy or through recitation and eurythmy. In this, recitation must return to its old, good element, where it is not cultivated only for its prosaic, literal content, as it is today, but for the rhythmic, the measured quality of the sound, which is what actually constitutes the artistry of the poem. For what is felt today as poetry is not, in the first instance, the actual artistry of the poetry, but the prose content of the poem. It is the formal, the rhythmic, the metrical that underlies it, and an inner lawfulness of the essence of the world is revealed.

In the second part, we will present Christmas plays today and tomorrow, today a Paradise Play.

We resumed these plays several years ago. I can say that I myself have a very close connection with the revival of the plays in our family. It is now almost forty years since I became acquainted with these plays through one of the men who has rendered the greatest service to their collection, through my revered friend and teacher Karl Julius Schröer. Schröer was one of the first to collect these games together with Weinhold, Schröer in particular. While Weinhold collected them in Silesia, Karl Julius Schröer collected them in the Oberufer region near Pressburg [Bratislava], where Germans had advanced towards the parts of European territories where other languages were spoken as a result of emigration from more western European areas.

The Hungarian countryside is permeated by old German colonists: in Transylvania, where the Saxons settled, in the Banat, where the Swabians came from the areas around Lake Constance, in Alsace, in what is now southern Württemberg, in northern Switzerland – numerous colonists moved into the areas of northwestern Hungary. And they brought with them those Christmas plays, those Bible plays, which were performed in their original form in the German motherland until the 16th century, and later only remained in a few places, fairly unnoticed by the educated world. In the colonies, especially in the Oberufer region, near the island of Schütt, near Pressburg, the practice of playing these Christmas games in a dignified manner every year around Christmas time has become established and was preserved until the forties, fifties and even sixties of the last century. And when they began to disappear from the scene, Karl Julius Schröer collected these Christmas games in the Hungarian region of Oberufer.

It is extremely interesting to observe these Christmas plays. They provide cultural-historical evidence of the way in which Christianity was actually introduced in Europe in centuries past, and how it affected the entire spiritual life of the people. Schröer had still observed it himself, and we often talked about these things, and he told me with what dignity, with what inner participation the people celebrated these Christmas games. They were well preserved by particularly select farmers in the village concerned, by particularly respected people. They were passed down from father to son, from son to grandson, and were held sacred; they were not easily shared with outsiders. It took a great deal of effort for Karl Julius Schröer to get them out. But, as I said, it was already the dawn of this play for the German colonists in Hungary.

When October, the harvest season, approached, the person who was considered the master of the arts in these farming and working-class areas – these were mostly extremely poor communities even back then, these German communities in Hungary – he gathered the local boys he considered most worthy, and he rehearsed these Christmas plays with them. The dignity with which this was done may be gathered from the fact that, under strict disciplinary laws, those who were allowed to participate were not allowed to leave during the entire period of the play. This is expressly prescribed for those who were allowed to participate: that they are not allowed to go to the pub or indulge in any other debauchery during the entire time. During the whole time, that meant a lot: it was immediately after the grape harvest was over that one was not allowed to get drunk. Anyone who somehow violated these rules was immediately dismissed.

All the roles were played by young men. The old custom of not allowing women to participate in comedy plays, including sacred comedies, was still in place, although the educated world had long since abandoned it. However, it was still preserved and noticeable at these festival plays. And from this one can see how ancient and sacred customs have been preserved in the performance of these plays. So tomorrow, for example, we will perform a play for you, a pastoral play, in which the Rhine is mentioned, from which one can see how these plays were originally, at least as late as the sixteenth century, were performed near Lake Constance. These things take us back, I would say, to the sixth century, so that we have before us the living out of Christian life as if it were happening right in front of us.

To present something like this, I would say, as a directly revealing story to the contemporary world, that is what we would like to make our task. Now that everything that is cultural life has become so sober, so dry and so abstract, now is the time to go back to such things, which, in directly vivid imagery, by raising the old into the present, transport us back into the becoming, into the development of humanity.

Of course, since we are not dealing with trained actors, I would ask you to receive this performance, as well as the eurythmy performance itself, as one of our modest attempts. We ourselves believe that what our eurythmy art has become today is only a beginning. It is indeed a supreme artistic aspiration to apply the human being as an instrument in art, not the violin, not the piano, not the trumpet, but the human being. Especially when you consider how all the laws of nature are somehow in action in the speaking human being, then you will know how to appreciate the ideal on which eurythmy is based. But it is only just beginning. We are our own harshest critics, and so I ask you to please be very indulgent as you take it all in.

It should also be mentioned that the eurythmy performance will include not only individual pieces but also the Norwegian “Dream Song of Olaf Ästeson”. It comes from the oldest Nordic folk myth that can be expressed artistically; it was rediscovered when, alongside the Statsmäl [Riksmäl], the Landsmäl of the old Norwegian language, the popular Norwegian language, was cultivated. This dream song, this Traumlied, gave the impression of genuine Norwegian folklore, and with the help of friends in high places, I tried to express in our present language that which leads back to ancient European-Nordic times in this poem.

I would like to say that this “Dream Song” expresses a very popular worldview, a worldview that is particularly loved in those cultures that have developed on the one hand in the particularly shaped way of life in Norway and in the influence of the neighboring cultures. I would say that here, too, we can see into the depths of human feeling – especially in the way that the relationship between Nordic, clairvoyant paganism and the Christianity that was spreading there flows into one another here in the 'Dream Song'. What has emerged from the confluence of these two world currents, taken up as an elementary, original folklore and its worldviews, is actually enshrouded in mystery in this “Dream Song of Olaf Åsteson”.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Son of God, begotten from eternity, who invisibly and without end,
Through whom the heavens and the earth were built, and all that dwells there was created,
Through whom the days and the hours pass and return;
Whom the angels in the heavenly castle always praise in fully harmonious singing,
Freed from all original sin, clothed in a weak body,
He, who took from Mary, the Virgin, destroyed the guilt of the first father Adam
As well as the lust of the mother Eve.
Today's glorious day of sublime splendor testifies that now the son,
The true sun, dispelled the ancient darkness of the world with the beam of his light.
Now the night is illuminated by the light of that new star,
Which once amazed the sky-wise gaze of the magicians,
And see, that shine for the shepherds, who were blinded
By the lofty splendor of the heavenly inhabitants.
Rejoice, Mary, Mother of God, for at your birth you were attended by a host of angels
singing your praises.
O Christ, only Son of the Father, who for our sake took on the nature of man,
of man, so you revive your own who plead here.
O Jesus, graciously hear the pleas of those whom you have deigned to take care of,
to make them, O God's Son, partakers of your divinity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Originally published in Anthroposophical Quarterly, Volume 22, Number 4, Winter 1977.

Yesterday I called your attention to the fact that the birth of Jesus gradually conquered men’s hearts and souls, that the Christmas Plays which can now be performed, only developed little by little their present beautiful form, together with that atmosphere of earnest devotion which streamed into them during the times when they were at their height. It is really still possible to say of the early forms of these Christmas Plays that people tried, in an entirely secular mood, to participate in something which they had seen for centuries in a form which they could not grasp. We may say that Christ, the Child, conquered the hearts of men only gradually. Indeed, He conquered the hearts of men quite slowly. In the 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th centuries, when the people themselves gradually began to take part in the Plays which in the past could be performed only by priests, we do not find the noble form which the Christmas Plays assumed later on. We have just seen two examples of these Plays,¹ and I have tried to explain to you their different origin, for they clearly reveal this. The first play has a simple, popular character. Its chief aim is to set forth how the Child, in whom the great Cosmic Spirit incarnated and began to work on earth, entered the world as a Child, and how He was, on the one hand, re-ceived by the publicans and on the other hand by the shepherds. This appears particularly in the first Christmas Play which was performed yesterday: the great difference in the reception given to the Child by the publicans and by the shepherds comes to expression in it.

The other Christmas Play is quite different. It immediately reveals to us that wise men—and for the people of those days wise men were at the same time Kings, Magi—had read in the stars what a significant destiny was awaiting mankind. In the action of this Play we therefore see ancient occult wisdom. And in the course of the action we see that in accordance with this occult wisdom, with these truths discovered in the stars, Herod enters the earthly events and faces us as the one by whose side we clearly recognise Evil, the Principle that remained backward, the devilish Ahrimanic-Luciferic principle. We see how the Christ Principle and the Luciferic-Ahrimanic Principle confront each other. But we also see the manifestation of forces which enter the course of events from the spiritual world. The Angels appear, as the manifestation of guidance from spiritual spheres; they lead and guide the action in order to frustrate Herod’s aims, and the events follow another course. Forces from the spiritual world pervade the will of men.—This is consequently a play containing forces which undoubtedly lead us beyond the events pertaining merely to the earth.

When we consider how these two plays face each other, one of them filled by the primitive conception of common folk, and the other by a wisdom which really indicates a primeval wisdom of the earth’s development, then we are induced to call up within ourselves thoughts concerning the events which took place in the course of time and the whole significance of the Mystery of Golgotha for the evolution of the earth.

Let us bear in mind that at the time—but this in a wider meaning—at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha took place, there existed in certain circles a profound wisdom in connect-ion with spiritual matters. This deep wisdom which existed at that time is called Gnosis.

In the external world, when considering the course of Europe’s spiritual culture, we may say: This Gnosis, this deeply spiritual science which existed in connection with the mysteries of the spiritual world, vanished from the cultural life of Europe, as far as the outer world is concerned,—and in the spiritual life of the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th centuries, etc., there existed only a very dim idea of what was contained in this science.

Those who knew something (I mean, those who knew what could be known by a Christian priest, a Christian scientist), those who had the knowledge which could be acquired in those days, were only aware of the existence of the Gnosis, because people had opposed it in the early Christian centuries, because opponents had fought against the Gnosis. Imagine the situation if to-day all the books and lecture-cycles which constitute our Anthroposophical literature were to be suppressed and burned, so that nothing remained—if the only writings on Anthroposophy available to posterity were books written by opponents! Imagine the situation that in centuries to come, people were to get hold of these books written by antagonists, acquiring from these their conception of the truths contained in our writings! This is what happened to the Gnosis.

An outstanding writer of the early Church was Irenaeus, the pupil of Bishop Polycarp of Asia Minor, who had been a disciple of the Apostles. But Irenaeus wrote as an opponent of the Gnosis. In the course of the centuries, the teachings of the Gnostics were gathered by reading what Irenaeus had written as a refutation of the Gnosis. In regard to this ancient wisdom, we must reckon with everything brought about by the circumstance that these teachings were trans-mitted by an opponent.

This shows you that the whole development of the Occident is really based on the fact that something handed down from past ages was blotted out, stamped out completely. Outwardly we see how new was the beginning brought by the Mystery of Golgotha, what an entirely new impulse it brought to the culture of the West. In reality it began everywhere with an entirely new impulse. Indeed, I might use the following comparison: The ancient writings lay deeply buried underground, like some ancient-city covered by the earth; deeply buried, when we consider the writings of Ambrose and Augustine, old Fathers of the Church, to Scotus, and so forth. A new beginning, a new element arose like a new city over apparently new ground, under which an ancient city lies buried, whose aspect is unknown. This is what took place in the course of the development of European culture.

If there is to be a spiritual deepening in the present age, it is therefore evident that this must be drawn out of man’s own forces and that human beings themselves must discover truths which cannot be handed on to them traditionally from outside, at least not in the course of the spiritual development of Europe. And it is out of the question (I cannot deal with this to-day, for it would lead us too far away from our subject), it is out of the question to draw in Oriental documents as a substitute for the external documents which have been lost in the spiritual life of the Occident. This is impossible for the simple reason that the Oriental documents convey something which is far more primitive than that which developed in the world by spreading from Asia Minor to North Africa, Southern Europe, and even as far as Central Europe. Spiritual knowledge was blotted out completely in the early Christian centuries; it reached posterity only through the writings of opponents.

The Gnostic writings which have been destroyed, do not only contain a knowledge of the spiritual worlds, the spiritual knowledge of these worlds—apart from the truths relating to Christ—but also the whole encompassing spiritual wisdom of ancient times in connection with the Mystery of Christ Jesus. The loss of these documents implies the loss of all this knowledge. The Gnostics (—if we wish to give them this name—) tried to grasp in their own way the course of the earth’s development and the true nature of Christ. In those days it was not yet possible to grasp these things as they can be grasped now, by drawing down from the spiritual worlds truths which need not be recorded in writing, because they exist in an immediately living form in the spiritual world. In those days the truths relating to the real being of Christ-Jesus could not be drawn down in this way. But certain truths relating to Christ-Jesus were known in an older form of wisdom which has been lost.

Quite recently, a few scant remains of a book entitled "Pistis-Sophia" were discovered, and of another one entitled "The Mystery of Jeû". Also in an external way, they draw, as it were, attention to the fact that the truths relating to Christ, which we should now strive to attain with the aid of anthroposophical methods, are not as foolish as the opponents of our Movement wish to make them appear. Only a small fragment, in Coptic writing, has been preserved of the "Book of Jeû"; nevertheless it calls attention to the fact that what we read in the Gospels is not the only wisdom which lived in the thoughts of men during the first centuries of Christian development.

The "Book of Jeû" describes how, after His Resurrection, Christ spoke to those who were at that time able to understand Him, to those who had become His disciples. The strange thing about this "Book of Jeû" (I mean, the small existing fragment of this book) is that it clearly speaks of Christ and of His true being in a way which differs completely from the Gospel of St. John. There is one thing which recurs again and again in this book, which clearly shows that it seeks to attract our attention to something quite definitive. This thing to which it draws attention over and over again, may, in other words, be explained as follows:

Suppose that in those days someone had wished to explain why Christ Jesus had entered the evolution of the earth; he would have had to do it in the following way—To those who were able to understand him, he would have said: "Behold, a new age is dawning, in which man will enter the future epoch of the development of the Consciousness-Soul. An age is approaching when the world will have to be grasped through man’s external physical organs, through organs which are essentially connected with the physical body. This age is approaching. The age in which revelations could be obtained through an originally primitive clairvoyance has gone by. Past is the age when knowledge could be gathered, not only by using the physical body with its instruments, but by using the etheric body independently of the physical body. This age has gone by—henceforth people will have to use as their only instrument the physical body. But also in future it will be possible to know things which in the past could only be known through the etheric body. In the external world, there will only exist a knowledge connected with the physical body, which is subjected to death. But a knowledge of the spiritual world cannot be gained through the instruments linked with the physical body. A Helper must come who kindles the etheric element in man, a Helper connected with the living essence, with everything in man’s earthly life which does not pertain to the earth. A Helper must come, Who tears out of the indolent, lifeless, physical body an understanding which is able to grasp the spiritual world, an understanding which lives in man and is connected with heaven; that understanding which cannot be crucified by the world, because it belongs to heaven, the understanding which cruci-fies the world, that is to say, which overcomes the world."

We should imagine that in earlier epochs, when people could not yet see Christ in His true Being, as He passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, they still felt connected with the spiritual world through the etheric body. When the physical body hardened more and more, thus becoming the instrument it is now, it was necessary that One should come, Christ, in order to draw a living essence out of the indolent instrument of the physical body. This is what we should imagine.

But let us now consider this "Book of Jeû". After having passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, Christ spoke to those who had learned to lean on Him and on the wisdom contained in His words: He said,

"I loved you, and I wished to give you Life."

In the words, "and I wished to give you Life", we hear that He wished to draw the indolent physical body out of its indolence, by giving it something which only the etheric body can give.

"Jesus, the Living One, is the Knowledge of Truth."

The Living One—that is, He who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha—speaks in such a way as to appear as the Representative of Life. The text then continues:

"This is the Book dealing with the Knowledge of the Invisible God through the hidden Mysteries"—, that is to say, of Mysteries which lie concealed in man—"which indicate the path to man’s chosen Being, leading in silence to the life of the Father of the World, in the arrival of the Redeemer, the Saviour of the souls who receive within them the Word of Life, higher than every other life—, in the knowledge of Jesus, the Living One, Who through the Father came out of the Aeon of Light into the All-ness of the Pleroma"—(i.e. of the other Aeons, of all the Spiritual Beings)—"in the teaching, which cannot be matched by any other, the teaching given by Jesus, the Living One, to His Apostles, when He said: This is the Teaching in which the whole Knowledge reposes."

We should thus imagine the Risen One Who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha speaking to His Disciples, who had learned to listen to Him.

Jesus, the Living One, began to speak to His Apostles as follows:

"Blessed is he who crucified the world and who did not let the world crucify him" (he who can grasp that part in man which cannot be conquered by matter, by external physical matter).

The Apostles replied unanimously by saying: "Teach us, O Lord, this way of crucifying the world, that the world may not crucify us, and we may not perish and lose our life."

Jesus, the Living One, answered and spoke: "He who has crucified the world is one who has found my Word and fulfils it in accordance with the will of Him who sent me."

And the Apostles replied by saying: "Speak to us, O Lord, that we may hear you! We followed you with all our heart, we left father and mother, vineyards and fields, we left estates and the glory of the external king and we followed you, that you might teach us the Life of your Father, who sent you." And Christ, the Living One, met this appeal of His apostles by revealing to them what He had to say.

Christ, the Living One answered and spoke: "The Life of my Father is this: that out of the human essence of that understanding you receive your soul, which is not of this earth …"

What the Living One expects, is this: That those who are His disciples should grasp that in man lives an understanding of spiritual things which may tear itself away from the physical body, an understanding that is not of this earth. If they call to life within them this understanding, they will in truth have grasped His Word.

… "this essence of every soul, may be grasped through what I reveal to you in the progress of my Word. And that you may fulfil it, and this before the Archon" (—i.e. before the essence of this Aeon, this age—), "his snares" (the Ahrimanic-Lucifer Being) "and his traps, which have no end,—that you may be saved from these. But you, my disciples, hasten to receive my Word with greatest care, so that you may recognise it, and that the Archon of this Aeon" (i.e. the Ahrimanic-Luciferic) "may not be at strife with you, because he cannot find any of his commands in me" (—he therefore finds his commands outside the One who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha): "that you yourselves, O! my Apostles, may fulfil it in regard to myself, and that I myself may free you, and you be hallowed by that freedom which has no blemish. Even as the Spirit of the Holy Ghost is holy, so will you become holy through the freedom of the Spirit, of the Holy Spirit."

Unanimously the Apostles—Matthew and John, Philip, Bartholomew and James—replied by saying:

"O! Jesus, Living One, whose goodness is spread out over those who have found your wisdom and your form in the Illumination, O! Light, burning in the Light you have kindled in our hearts, when we received the Light of Life, O veritable Logos, that through the Gnosis, has become for us true knowledge of what the Living One has taught!"

Jesus, the Living One, answered and spoke: "Blessed is he who recognises this and leads heaven down to the earth." (i.e. who is conscious of the fact that there is something in him which is not dependent on his earthly body, but on the Beings of Heaven, and who leads into the earthly events that part in him which is connected with heaven.)

"Blessed is he who recognises this and leads heaven downwards, who carries the earth and sends it up to heaven" (—who connects the earthly part in him with the heavenly, so that when he passes through the portal of death with the fruits of his earthly life, he may lead the earth back to heaven).

The Apostles replied by saying: "Jesus, Living One, explain to us how we may bring down heaven to earth. For we have followed you, in order that you might teach us the true Light."

And Jesus, the Living One, answered and spoke: "The Word that lives in heaven"—(He means, the wisdom or knowledge which may be gained independently of man’s physical being) … the Word lived in heaven before the earth, which is called world, came into being. But if you know my Word, you will lead heaven down to earth and the Word will dwell in you. Heaven is the invisible Word of the Father. If you know this, you will lead heaven down to the earth. I will teach you how the earth may be sent up to heaven, that you may know: To send the earth up to heaven, is to listen to the Word of Knowledge, that is no longer mere knowledge of an earthly human being, but knowledge of a heavenly human being …" (—one who has severed his understanding from the external physical body, who has ceased to be an earthly human being and has become a heavenly human being. His understanding has ceased to be earthly: it has become heavenly).

"You will instead be saved from the Archon of this Aeon" (from the Ahrimanic-Luciferic Being).

Here, therefore, is a fragment which has been preserved and has been found again, a fragment which calls attention to the infinitely profound knowledge which once—during the first centuries of the Christian era—connected man with the secret of the Mystery of Golgotha.

Editor’s Note

The two independent discoveries in the forties of this century of the Coptic manuscripts in Upper Egypt in 1945 and the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 have both proved of very great importance for the study of primitive Christianity. In particular, the Scrolls have led the way to a new understanding of the Messianic prophecies while the Coptic manuscripts, apparently the library of a Gnostic sect, have given unexpected opportunity to learn at first hand the teachings and beliefs of various sects, or groups, belonging to a widespread spiritual movement active in the first and second centuries of our era.

Of the few discoveries of Gnostic writings made earlier it is invaluable to have Dr. Steiner’s interpretation of the concepts that appear in the fragments from the Books of Jeû, with his interpretation of the phraseology which may be almost incomprehensible to the reader of today. Now that some of the new discoveries are available in English translation they can be approached in the light of this lecture, and much that seems incomprehensible—even bizarre—reveals itself as having a meaning based on a profound spiritual knowledge. Of the new discoveries, perhaps the books that comprise what is called The Jung Codex have excited the most interest. They were sent to Dr. Carl Jung at Zurich on account of the fact that he was known to be deeply interested in Gnosticism. These writings were first made known to the public in a newspaper report of November 1953, just on thirty three years after Rudolf Steiner gave his lecture.

In one of his Letters to the Members (No. 22 in The Michael Mystery) Dr. Steiner wrote of the Gnosis and its relation to Anthroposophy, pointing out that the Gnosis was properly connected with the development of the Sentient Soul while Anthroposophy is, "by the light of Michael’s agency, to evolve out of the Spiritual Soul a new form of understanding of Christ and the World."

• 1. A Shepherds Play from the Palatinate and a Three King’s Play from Oberufer, near Pressburg. These plays were performed at Dornach on the stage of the Schreinerei for the first time at Christmas 1915.