The Rudolf Steiner Archive

If we recall what we have learnt so far about our earth's beginnings, we find many things which still need to be explained. What we have so far learnt does, however, make clear that we have to look for much more reality—many more Beings—in Genesis than the usual translations convey.

We pointed out yesterday that the word yom does not indicate the abstract period of time which is what the word “day” means now, but refers to the Beings whom we call Spirits of Personality, Time-Spirits, Archai. This discovery enables us to enter more deeply into what I have already repeated several times: that behind the weaving life of elementary existence described in the Bible account of the creation, soul-spiritual Beings are everywhere to be seen. We may now see Being instead of empty abstractions behind much else that comes before us in the Genesis account. Of course it is easy to see Being when the Bible is referring to the Spirit of the Elohim—Ruach Elohim¹—but if we wish to grasp the sense of the ancient tradition we have to look for Being not only in those expressions where probably even modern minds would be prepared to recognise it; we must be prepared to find it everywhere. For example we should be quite justified in raising the question in connection with such expressions (to use my own words) as “The inner activity was tohu wabohu” and “And darkness was upon the elementary material existence.” Have we not perhaps also to see something of the nature of Being behind what is described as “darkness”? We cannot understand the Genesis account unless we can answer such questions. Just as we have to see manifestations of the spirit behind all that appears in the positive direction, such as light, air, water, earth, warmth, so we shall perhaps have to see manifestations of a deeper spiritual nature in the more negative expressions.

To get to the bottom of this, we must again go back to the earliest point we can reach in the development of our planet. As we have often said, we must think of the ancient Saturn existence as a condition of pure warmth, and that with the transition to the Sun there then took place on the one hand a densification to air or gas, on the other hand a rarefaction in the direction of the etheric, to light-ether. We have said that the passage in which the words ring forth And God (the Elohim) said, Let there be light; and there was light is describing a kind of repetition of this coming into existence of the light-ether.

Now we may ask: Was the darkness there of itself; or does spiritual Being lie behind this also? If you read the relevant passages in my Occult Science you will come across something extremely important for the understanding of all development—the fact that at each stage of evolution certain Beings remain behind. Only a certain number of Beings reach their goal. I have often used a singularly bald illustration, pointing out that not only are some schoolboys backward, to the sorrow of their parents, but in the cosmic process, too, certain Beings do in fact lag behind, do not attain their appropriate goal. Thus we may say that during the ancient Saturn evolution certain Beings did not reach their proper goal, they lagged behind. During the Sun evolution they still remained at the Saturn stage.

How could one recognise on the Sun the Beings who were still really Saturn Beings? By the fact that they had not acquired the light nature, which was of the very essence of the Sun state. But because these Beings were nevertheless there, the Sun, which I have described as an inweaving of light, warmth and air, had darkness as well as light in it. And this darkness was the mark of the Beings remaining at the Saturn stage, just as the weaving light indicated the Beings who had progressed regularly to the Sun stage. Thus, there was an interweaving of Beings who were still at the Saturn stage of development with Beings who had progressed normally to the Sun stage. From the inner aspect these Beings moved in and out among one another; and outwardly they manifested themselves as an interplay of light and darkness. We can call the manifestation of the more advanced Beings, light, and the manifestation of the Beings remaining behind at the Saturn stage, darkness.

If we know this, we shall expect the relationship between advanced and backward Beings to reappear during the recapitulation of the Saturn and Sun epochs in earth evolution. And because the backward Saturn Beings represent an earlier stage of evolution, they will appear earlier than the light in the recapitulation also. Thus, quite rightly, in the first verse of Genesis we are told that darkness prevailed over the elementary substances. That is the recapitulation of the Saturn existence, now a backward one. The Sun existence has to wait; it comes later, it comes at the point where the Bible says: Let there be light.

Thus we see that the Genesis story is in complete accordance with the recapitulation described in my Occult Science.

If we would understand existence, we must be clear that what emerged at an earlier stage does not just go on for a time and then disappear. Something new is continually arising, but the old remains actual alongside the new and continues to work within it. And so even today we have co-existing the two stages of evolution which we can call light and darkness. Light and darkness permeate our existence.

Here we come to a rather thorny subject. Possibly some of you may know that for the last thirty years or so I have been trying at intervals to show the deep significance and value of Goethe's Theory of Colour. Of course, anyone who supports this theory today must make up his mind that he will not gain the ear of his contemporaries. For those whose knowledge of physics would qualify them to understand its significance are today wholly unprepared for it. Modern physics, with its fantastic nonsense about ether vibrations and so on, is utterly incapable of penetrating to the real heart of Goethe's Theory of Colour. For this we shall still have to wait for several decades. Anyone who treats of the subject knows that. And the others—forgive me for saying this—those whose knowledge of occultism would perhaps equip them to understand the essential nature of the Goethean theory, know too little about physics for me to be able to discuss the subject in detail. Thus there is today no proper basis for such a discussion. The fundamental content of Goethe's theory of colour is the mystery of light and darkness, working together as two real polaric entities in the world. The concept of matter which is put forward today is simply a fantasy; it is an illusion. Matter is in reality a soul-spiritual being, which is to be traced everywhere where the polaric contrast of light and darkness is effective. The physical notion of matter which is generally accepted is, in truth, a chimera. In the regions of space where, according to physics, we are to look for a sort of apparition called “matter,” there is in actual fact nothing else but a certain degree of darkness. And this dark content of space is filled out with something of a soul-spiritual nature, something akin to what is intended in Genesis in the passage where “darkness” (the word used to denote the collective whole of this soul-spiritual entity) is described as weaving over the elementary existence. All these things are much more profound than modern natural science dreams! Thus when Genesis speaks of darkness, it is speaking of the manifestation of the backward Saturn Beings. And when it speaks of light, it is referring to the advanced Beings. They interact and interweave with one another.

We said yesterday that the main lines, the main features, of evolution were laid down by Beings at the stage of the Exusiai, the Spirits of Form, so that these Beings plan the general direction of the activities of light. And further, we have seen that they make use of the Spirits of Personality as their servants, and that behind the expression yom, day, we have to see a Being of the rank of the Archai, appointed under the Elohim. We may also assume that, just as on the positive side these servants of the Elohim, these Spirits of Personality indicated by yom, are active, so also the backward spiritual Beings, who work in opposition to them in darkness, play their part. Indeed we may say that darkness is something that the Elohim find already there. Light is something they bring into being through their musing, their meditation. When they think out the two complexes from what has remained over from the earlier existence, it comes about that darkness is interwoven therein as the expression of the backward Beings. They themselves bestow the light. But just as out of the light the Elohim appoint the Beings represented by yom, day, so out of the darkness come Beings who are of the same rank as these, but Beings who have lagged behind at an earlier stage. Thus we can say that all that manifests itself as darkness stands together on one side in opposition to the Elohim And now we have to ask, who are the Beings who oppose the Archai, servants of the Elohim, the Beings indicated by the word yom? Who are the corresponding backward Beings in opposition to them?

To avoid misunderstanding, it would be as well to clear up first another point—whether we have always to look upon these backward Beings as evil, as something wrong in the world-context. It is easy for the abstract man, the man who is concerned only with concepts, to feel something like indignation over the backward Beings; or he can make the mistake of being sorry for the poor things! We should not harbour feelings and ideas of such a kind as regards these tremendous realities of the universe. That would lead us completely astray. On the contrary we should remind ourselves that everything happens out of cosmic wisdom, and that whenever Beings remain behind at a particular stage of development, it means something; it has significance for the whole for Beings to remain behind, just as it has for them to attain their goal; in other words, there are certain functions which cannot be carried out by the advanced Beings, functions for which Beings are needed who remain at an earlier stage. They are in their proper place in their backwardness. What would become of the world if all those who ought to be teachers of young children were to become university professors? Those who do not become professors are much better where they are than the professors would be. Those who occupy academic chairs would probably turn out to be very badly suited for the instruction of seven-, eight-, nine- and ten-year-olds! Something of the same kind is true in cosmic relationships. There are certain tasks for which those who attain their goal would be little fitted. For certain tasks those who have remained behind—we could equally well say those who have renounced progress—must take their place. And just as the advanced Spirits of Personality, the Yamim, were given their task by the Elohim, so the backward Archai also, those Spirits of Personality who reveal themselves not through light, but through darkness, are made use of in order to evoke the laws of earthly development. They are allotted their proper place, so that they may make their contribution to the orderly development of our existence.

How important that is we can see from an illustration borrowed from everyday life. The light of which Genesis speaks is not the light which we can see with our physical eyes—that is a subsequent form of light. In the same way what we designate as physical darkness, what surrounds us at night, is a later form of what is called darkness in Genesis. None of you will doubt that the physical daylight which we see nowadays is important both for man and for other living things. Take for example the plants! If you remove them from the light they deteriorate, become stunted in their growth. Light is an element of life for every living thing, and, so far as their external physical existence is concerned, it is a necessity for men too.

But something else is also necessary as well as light. To understand what this is, we have to consider the rhythmic alternation of sleeping and waking. What does it really mean to be awake? All the activity of our souls, all that we develop in our thinking and feeling, all the ebb and flow of our passions—in short, all that happens through the fluctuating energies of our astral bodies and our egos, constitutes a continual using up of our physical bodies during day life. That is a very ancient occult truth, a truth to which even modern physiology comes if it knows how to interpret its own findings properly. What the soul unfolds as its inner life in the waking state continuously uses up the forces of the external physical body, the first rudiments of which were bestowed during the Saturn existence. The life of the physical body is quite different in sleep, when the astral body with its fluctuant inner life is outside it. Whereas in waking life there is a continuous consumption, or even a continuous destruction, of the forces of the physical body, in sleep these forces are being restored, being renewed and built up again all the time. So that in our physical and etheric bodies we have to distinguish destructive processes and processes of renewal—destructive processes which take place during waking life, processes of renewal which take place during sleep. But nothing which happens anywhere in space is isolated, it is always related to existence as a whole. And we must not think of those processes of destruction, which take place in our physical bodies from the time we awaken to the time we go to sleep again, as being confined within the limits of our skin. They are closely bound up with cosmic processes. They are merely a continuation of what flows into us from outside, so that during the waking life of day we are connected with the destructive forces of the universe, and during sleep with the forces of renewal.

This destruction of our physical bodies which goes on during the waking life of day could not have happened during the Saturn evolution, otherwise the first rudiments of our physical body could never have been formed. For obviously one can build up nothing if one starts to destroy it. The Saturnian operation on our bodies had to be a constructive one. The destructive process takes place in the daytime under the influence of light, but on Saturn there was no light. Therefore the Saturn activity on our physical bodies was an up-building one, and had to be maintained at least for a time, even into the later period, when on the Sun light appeared. Then the up-building activity could only be maintained through Saturn Beings remaining behind to care for it.

It was necessary for the Saturn Beings to be kept back in cosmic evolution, so that they could undertake the rebuilding of the physical body during sleep, while there was no light. Thus the backward Saturn Beings have their part to play in our existence; without them we should be exposed to nothing but destruction. There has to be an alternation, a co-operation, of Sun Beings and Saturn Beings, of light and darkness. Thus if the activity of the light Beings is to be rightly guided by the Elohim, they must inweave into their own work in an orderly fashion the work of the Beings of darkness. There can be no stability in cosmic activity unless the force of darkness is everywhere interwoven with the force of light. And in this complication of the forces of light and darkness lies one of the secrets of cosmic existence, of cosmic alchemy. This secret is touched upon in the seventh scene of my first Mystery Play, where Johannes Thomasius enters Devachan, and where one of Maria's companions, Astrid, is given the task of weaving the dark into the light. Throughout the conversation between Maria and her three companions you will find many cosmic mysteries concealed, which can well be pondered for a long, long time.

Thus we must never forget that the interplay between the forces of sun-light and Saturn-darkness is a necessity of our existence. When therefore the Elohim placed the Spirits of Personality as their deputies in charge of the weaving of the light forces, of the work which is performed upon us men and upon other earthly beings while the light is affecting us, they had also to appoint the backward Saturn Beings as fellow-workers; they had to see that the whole work of the universe was carried on by the normally advanced and the backward Archai together. The backward Archai are active in the darkness. Hence the Elohim employ not only the Beings designated by yom, day, but they set in opposition to them Beings who weave in the darkness. And the Bible says with a wonderfully realistic description of the facts: And God called the light Day (yom), and the darkness He called Night (lay'lah).² And lay'lah does not mean our abstract night, but lay'lah are the Saturn Archai, who at that time had not advanced to the Sun stage. And to this day it is they who are active in us during sleep, when they work upon our physical and etheric bodies, building them up. This mysterious expression lay'lah, which has given rise to all kinds of myths, is neither our abstract “night” nor is it anything which need lead to myth-making. It is simply the name of the backward Archai, who unite their activity with that of the advanced Archai.

Thus we have paraphrased the appropriate words in Genesis somewhat as follows: The Elohim planned the main lines of existence; they deputed the advanced Archai to work under them, and appointed to help them those Archai who in resignation had remained in darkness at the Saturn stage, in order that existence could come about. Thus we have yom and lay'lah as two contrasted groups of Beings, who help the Elohim and who are at the stage of the Time-Spirits, the Spirits of Personality. We see existence being woven out of the Spirits of Form and the Spirits of Personality, out of advanced Beings and the backward Beings of these two hierarchies.

Now that we have found an answer to these questions which satisfies us up to a certain point (there is of course much more behind all these things), another question will be on the tip of all your tongues. What of the other hierarchies? We distinguish among the hierarchies in descending order from the Spirits of Form, first the Archai, the Spirits of Personality, then the Archangeloi, the Archangels, or Fire-Spirits. Does Genesis say nothing of these? Let us look more closely to find out what the position is with regard to the Fire-Spirits. We know that they reached their human stage during the Sun evolution. They have advanced through the Moon stage to that of earth. They are the Beings who are inwardly connected with everything of a sun nature, for it was during the Sun evolution that they reached their human stage. And when during the Moon evolution it became necessary for the Sun to separate from the earth, which was at that time of a Moon nature, then these Beings, who had gone through their most important stage of development on the Sun, who were, so to say, by their very nature associated with the Sun, naturally remained united with the Sun. When therefore the Moon (later to become earth) separated from the Sun, these Beings remained, not with the separating Earth-Moon, but with the Sun. They are the principal Beings who work upon the earth from without.

I have already indicated that in the evolution from Saturn to Sun, the highest form of life which could be reached on the Sun was the plant species. Before an animal nature with an inner life could come about there had to be a separation, a cleavage. Thus it was not until the Moon evolution that anything of an animal nature could arise. An influence from without was needed. Now in Genesis we are not told of anything being active from without up to the end of the third day of creation. The transition from the third to the fourth day is an important one, for we are told that on the fourth day light forces, Beings of light, began to be active from without. So that, just as in the Moon period the sun shone upon the Moon from without, so now both the sun and the moon shone upon the earth from without. It amounts to no less than this—up to this point all those forces which were themselves within the earth element could take effect. Up to this point it was possible for there to be a recapitulation of earlier stages of evolution, and for forces centralised in the earth itself to arise anew. Thus we saw yesterday how in the Spirit of the Elohim who brooded over the waters the warmth state was recapitulated; how in the moment designated by the words Let there be light the entry of light was recapitulated; how at the point where the forces of the sound-ether broke in and separated the upper from the lower, the sound-ether stage was recapitulated. That was on the second day of creation. Then we saw how the life-ether intervened on the third day, when out of the earth element, out of the new condition, there came forth all that can be brought about by the life-ether—the sprouting green. But in order for anything animal to find a place on the earth there has to be a repetition of the “being shone upon” (if I may use the expression), an influence of forces acting from without. Hence it is quite in accordance with the facts that there should be no mention in Genesis of anything of an animal nature until after we have been told of forces working upon the earth from cosmic space. Up to that time Genesis speaks only of the plant nature; all the beings on the earth were at the plant stage. The animal nature could not begin until light Beings were influencing the earth from its environment.

What then came about is described in Genesis in words of which various translations exist. [The English Authorised Version is: And God said, ... let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.]

Now there are some commentators, some exegetists, who have begun to think. But at the present day, when people scorn to penetrate to fundamental realities, it is the wretched lot of commentators that they begin to think, but cannot think anything through to the end. I have known some of these commentators who have reached the point of acknowledging that the usual rendering is nonsense. I should like to meet the man who can really make any sense of these words. What really lies behind them?

If we wish to render this passage faithfully with a real sense of the associations which the words would have had for the ancient Hebrew sage, and with philological thoroughness, we shall have to say that once more it is not a question of signs, but of the activity of living Beings making themselves known in the form of successive events in time. A correct translation would be: And the Elohim appointed Beings to regulate the course of time for the beings on earth, to regulate specific divisions of time (the word “day” is not mentioned at all), larger or smaller periods (usually given as “year” and “day”). Thus the reference is to those Beings who stand next below the rank of the Archai and who regulate life. The tasks performed by the Time-Spirits, the Archai, lie a stage lower than the tasks of the Elohim. Then come the regulators, the sign-fixers, for what has to be regulated, grouped, within the activity of the Archai. But these are none other than the Archangels. Thus we may venture to say that in the moment to which Genesis refers, when not only is something taking place in the body of the earth, but when forces are working into the earth from without, it becomes possible for Beings who are already united with the sun existence—the regulating Archangels, who are one stage lower than the Archai—to intervene. While the Archai themselves are still active as Aeons, for the deployment of their forces they make use of the Archangels, the light-bearers, who act from the circumference. That means that through the constellations of the light-Beings surrounding the earth, the Archangels work out of cosmic space in such a way that the great ordinances laid down by the Archai may be carried into effect.

Those who were present at the course of lectures I gave in Christiania will remember that even today the Archai are still behind what we are accustomed to call the Spirit of the Age. If we look around at the way our own world has been organised, we find that each age has a number of peoples over whom for a specific period a Time-Spirit holds sway. Side by side with him and subordinated to him work the several Folk-Spirits. And just as today the Spirits of the Age or Time-Spirits are in control, and behind them are the Archai—I described that in my Christiania lectures³—so behind the Folk-Spirits are the Archangels; in a certain way they are the Folk-Spirits. Genesis points to the fact that even in times when man himself was really not yet there, these spiritual Beings were the organising powers.

Thus we must say that it was the Elohim who brought light into existence; they manifested themselves through light. But for lesser activities within the light they appointed the Archai, who are indicated in Genesis by the word yom, and who ranked next below them among the hierarchies; and they placed beside the Archai the Beings who must of necessity be woven into the web of existence, in order that the requisite activity of darkness can come into association with the activity of light. Side by side with yom they placed lay'lah, which is usually translated “night.” Then it became a question of how to progress further and into greater detail. For this, other Beings from the ranks of the hierarchies are chosen. Thus when it has been said that the Elohim or Spirits of Form manifested themselves through light, and placed the affairs of light and darkness in charge of the Archai, one has to add that now they took another step and, specialising further, appointed the Archangels to activities which not only call an external plant life into existence, but which are now to call forth an inner life, an inner life capable of reflecting the outer; they entrusted to the Archangels the activity which has to stream upon our earth from without, so that not only can the plant species shoot up, but also the animal nature, weaving its inward life of image and sensation.

Thus we see how, when we know how to interpret it, the Genesis account refers to Archangels too, quite in accordance with the facts. When you turn to the exegesis of the general run of commentators you will always feel dissatisfied. But if you turn for help to the same source from which the Genesis account came, if you turn to Occult Science, a flood of light will be thrown upon that account. It will all appear to you in a new light. And this ancient document, which otherwise would inevitably remain incomprehensible, because of the impossibility of translating the ancient living words into our language, will endure as a document which speaks to mankind for all time.

• 1. According to the Authorised Version: and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
• 2. The “y” is consonantal, as in the word yellow.
• 3. The Mission of Folk-Souls in connection with Germanic and Scandinavian Mythology. Eleven lectures by Rudolf Steiner given at Oslo in June, 1910. (English translation, 1929, out of print.

Today, we want to talk about some things that might be outside the normal sphere of deliberation but that will clarify, from a different perspective, some of the material that we have heard about in earlier lectures. The overall message discussed today is meant to shed light on much of what we’ve heard before and will hear in the future. Today, we will talk about the hierarchy of beings that exist in the world and are above the human being. We have occasionally mentioned such beings in the context of the Earth’s evolution. Now we will look at them in a different context, namely from the perspective of those beings’ characteristics, their purpose, and their work.

Nowadays there is a certain convenience in terms of world-view, as many people do not want to put any other beings between themselves and the Godhead. It is so incredibly comfortable to imagine a mineral kingdom, a plant kingdom, an animal kingdom, and a human kingdom, and then, without much ado, to climb up to the all-pervading God, about whom one believes to have a more or less correct consciousness or feeling. For the real Science of the Spirit it is not that convenient—between humans and the entity, about which we have a presentiment that it might be the Godhead of the world, it needed to insert beings at the most diverse stages of perfection. This hierarchy has been repeatedly hinted at. In Christian Esotericism¹/6^th Century, probably by Severus, the Patriarch of Antioch. Compare the introduction in the referenced volume, pages 13-14. they have the following names: Angels, Archangels, Primordial Forces, Powers, Virtues, Dominions, Thrones, Cherubims, Seraphims. These are nine different kinds of beings, to which man is connected right at the bottom of the hierarchy. Only if we look upwards beyond the realm of the Seraphim can we divine what we address as the Godhead.

Do not believe that it is insubstantial and meaningless if it is said that it is a convenience of the worldview to simply ascend from the human being to the Godhead without involving these beings. If human beings had not forgotten to study and acknowledge them, then the aberrations of materialism would not have occurred. Although it is possible to combine some sort of religious feeling, a kind of dark religious sentiment, with the immediate ascent from human being to deity, but it is never possible to arrive in this way at a real understanding of the world; a true picture of the evolution of the world can never be combined with this. For this reason, humanity has now lost its understanding of the world. There is an aspect in religion that is based only on feelings and vague emotions that will always allow itself to be denied in the face of materialistic ideas. The Theosophical world-view re-opens an understanding of the world by teaching mankind again about these beings. In this way, a reference point is created in order to counter the denial of a higher world. People who today struggle against acknowledging this world are increasingly preparing the ground for the most banal, disastrous materialism. The materialists themselves are really the victims—the real perpetrators are those who, out of convenience, do not want to know anything about what exists between mankind and the Godhead.

Now that you know the reason why we must talk about these higher beings today, we will look at their characteristics in a free aphoristic way. First, we will examine the angels, the Angeloi, the divine messengers, who stand closest to human beings. They differ from human beings mostly through their faculties of perception and recognition. A human being perceives and acts out his deeds within a world that consists of the four realms of nature; namely among the minerals, plants, animals and human beings. This is the nature of his perception; these are his acts of will.

The angels, who stand one stage above the human beings, differ from them in that the mineral realm does not exist for their perception. Their perceptive faculty begins with the plant kingdom and then progresses further to the animal, the human, and to their own angel kingdom. Within these four kingdoms the life of the angels takes place. What the human being perceives as a mineral filling a spatial area is for these beings empty space, blank space. If you remember how in my book Theosophy I’ve described how, in Devachan, man perceives the mineral world, namely as empty space, then you roughly understand the kind of perception these beings have, who live permanently in such a world. The minerals do not present an obstacle for them—they are able to walk through them; they are not interested in them. The mineral realm is too far beneath them. Their awareness only begins with the plant kingdom and extends to their own realm.

AAs angelic beings, they call themselves “I”. By being so constituted they will, through their actions, make something clear to us that we already know. When the human being goes through the portal of death, he will first encounter the curious experience of the memory picture. It presents itself thus: When the human being dies, he first gets the feeling that he will grow and grow increasingly, and this enlargement is accompanied by the appearance of the memory picture. Once the picture ends, something like a kind of extract—like a fruit of life—remains. This will create a type of germinal force for the construction of the human being in his next incarnation. This is a kind of etheric, internally structured essence that remains with him as the essence of all his experiences in the etheric body and will accompany him through the eternities. If we also remember that the human being, after having passed through the Kamaloka, takes this essence with him to Devachan, and that he is not passive there but has his essential tasks to fulfil, then the deeds of those beings who are standing one level above us will become quite clear. The human being only reincarnates once he can experience something new, once he can take a new fruit into himself. The Earth goes through many transformations. Therefore, it is wrong that it is not necessary to come repeatedly as some people believe. A human being can always experience something new that he will take with him into eternity.

What is causing the transformation of the Earth’s surface? Who is working on the transformation of the Earth? How does it happen that a completely different picture of the plant world emerges in a particular area, with completely different living conditions? Just imagine, for example, how the area where Munich is located now must have looked 3,000 years ago and how human beings on the physical plane continuously change the face of the Earth with their physical powers. But because man only changes the mineral kingdom, you can imagine that other changes have to arise from Devachan. And from there, once again, it is the human beings who, coming from the spiritual, consistently transform the Earth. But they could not do it by themselves. They would not know what the face of the Earth should look like, or what condition it should be in. They are only able to do this under the leadership of higher beings. Those higher beings who guide and lead them are the beings that we call angels. They deal with what exists in a human being during the presence in Devachan in a different form. They guide and lead the eternal Ego of man. And because they, due to their nature are able to reach down into the world of plants, they can achieve the transformation of the Earth.

Now it will be easy to comprehend that these beings are always leading, guiding beings for the human Ego. They do not even interrupt their leadership when the Ego gets incarnated again. The Ego is regulated and led by such entities. Therefore, the naive belief that a protective being exists for the higher Ego is not unfounded. We know however, that the entities we call angels were still human beings when they were on the Moon. From human beings, they have evolved higher. Knowing this it is easy to understand that man also is on the way to becoming such a higher being himself and will be one on Jupiter. Thus, there is something in man, that works today towards a higher existence and is on the way to become such a being. He will then be of a nature similar to such angelic beings. Here we are looking deeply into the spiritual development of the world. However, what we have in front of us as a list of names, these should not be considered to be something permanent—but a description only of hierarchical levels.

When we now focus higher up on the archangels, we arrive at beings that once again have a different faculty of perception and a different type of activity. For them, even the plant world is not of interest, as it is not perceptible. Their perception only begins with the animal world. This is their lowest realm—followed by the human, angel and archangel realms—these are the four realms of these beings. Thus, we can say we are looking up to such sublime beings who reach down with their deeds only as far as the animal kingdom. They live in the animal and human kingdoms and so on, but their deeds do not reach down into the plant kingdom.

These facts were known to the earlier consciousness of human beings. We are allowed here to look deeply into the emotional life of earlier peoples and times. Just as our ancestors still felt aware of the deeds of angels in plants, they felt aware of the deeds of archangels in animals. For this reason, ancient people, such as the Egyptians, worshipped certain animals. This was an expression of the knowledge of mankind. Whoever looks at the curious figures, the subject of Egyptian animal worship, will stand in awe of the deep wisdom of those people. Not without reason did they connect these animals with higher beings and mankind. Let us keep in mind how the life of humans was always connected to the life of animals, how progress on Earth is connected to animals—certain aspects of man’s development depend on animals—then we will comprehend the deep foundation of animal worship.

What is the responsibility of the archangels? Nowadays, some people are still saying that something like a Folk Spirit exists. But for most people, this has become just empty talk, something abstract. Most people do not know a lot about the fact that a nation is actually led by a real Folk Spirit. This Folk Spirit is an archangel, for whom the whole nation is one body, just as a human body is for the human spirit. The Folk Spirits are the tribal spirits. Whilst the angels guide and lead individual people through their incarnations, the archangels lead the lives of whole groups, entire nations. Now we will understand why the Egyptians felt that the deity gave them certain animals as companions. It is because the lives of whole groups of people are deeply connected to the lives of certain animal species. They correctly saw the deeds of the Folk Spirit in this. They worshipped the power of the Folk Spirit, who had sent the animal companion to them.

You might ask me, if one could imagine a being that perceives all the separate organs of a human being but is unable to perceive him as a whole entity; such being would be unable to comprehend that these organs form a whole. So you could say, certainly, maybe today with his current perception man does not directly perceive the angels and archangels, but he might perceive what their organs, their ears, and their eyes are. Or, we might imagine that angels perceive plants, animals, humans and angels. What then are their sense organs? Maybe people could even perceive the sense organs of angels? Where are these? They exist and they can be perceived by human beings. Man just doesn’t know this.

The sense organs of the angelic beings will become understandable when I tell you that man himself has two eyes to see the mineral world with, but can not see the his eyes directly on himself. The sense organs are made for perception, but they do not perceive themselves. Thus, it is with the angels in the mineral world. Their sense organs can be found in the mineral physical world, but they do not perceive that world themselves. The sense organs of the angels are our precious gemstones. These are mysterious tools for angelic beings to perceive with. Thus, these organs lie within the mineral world. In the same way that the human being has his sense of feeling and his sense of touch, these beings possess their sense of feeling, which expresses itself in the carnelian; and their facial sense in the chrysolite. They simply do not perceive within the mineral world because their sense organs are in it. Even in this regard, we can find some dim consciousness amongst the ancient people who ascribe particular properties to certain precious stones. These properties derive from the presence of angels in them.

Therefore, what we mean by Folk Spirit is a very real presence within the beings who we call archangels. Let us now focus on the Primordial Forces, who are even one level higher. What is their responsibility with regard to the evolution of mankind? When looking at their faculties of perception, we have to say that the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms are non-existent for them. The lowest realm that they perceive is the human realm. Including this, their perception stretches over four kingdoms—the human realm, the angel realm, the realm of the archangels, and their own realm. They reach down only as far as the level of human beings. Let us visit their activities. Again, we find an expression to which man has no real connection: the Spirit of an Epoch, of a Time. Each epoch has its own unique characteristics. For example, think of our post-Atlantean time. In five Epochs, the Spirit of Time has changed. Among the Indians, the Zeitgeist (the Spirit of Time) did not want to acknowledge the physical world, considering it to be Maya. This was immediately after a dawning clairvoyance had sunk in and the human being had stepped into the physical world. From then onwards, we see how man conquers the world bit by bit.

During the second epoch, amongst the Persians, man becomes aware that the Earth is a field of his work. He realises that he has to imprint his spirit on the material world. He confronts the benevolent spirit Ormuzd as a servant—time overcomes the evil Ahriman.

Then follows the third epoch, the Egyptian-Chaldaean-Babylonian time, where the spirit continues to work. The sciences appear. The human being not only understands the world as his working field, but he searches for its laws. The Egyptians discover geometry. The Chaldean is searching in outer space for a pattern of the movement of the stars, the world in its material substantiality, is thought to be pervaded by laws, that is, by spirit.

In the fourth epoch, the Greek era, man conquers one more piece of this other world through art. Greek art is something special because here the human being imprints his own “I-form” onto the material matter. Then, once again, a new epoch followed. We can continue to move on step by step, and would see how the Spirit of the Time changes itself. Just like the face of the Earth is transformed by the angels who are guiding the human “I”, and the archangels are leading the people of nations, so the consecutive epochs are determined by the Primordial Forces. Those beings that are standing behind the processes are incredibly important to observe. Separate human individuality is something different—and its work under the influence of the Spirits of the Epoch is something else again. Think of Giordano Bruno.² What has happened through him, has not been done by him alone. Had he incarnated three centuries earlier or later, he would have been an equally gifted individual, but he would have had to do something quite different, led by the Spirit of his Time. The Spirits of Time, who are an expression of the Primordial Forces that reach down into the human being, are positioning these people in the places where they belong. If you look at the individual human being as a tool of the Primordial Forces, as material of these Spirits, then you will understand their work. Wherever man appears in a large or small position, they have to be judged accordingly, for man is to the Primordial Forces what the minerals are to us. For all those concerned with the Science of the Spirit, the question always arises to what extent this or that personality is the material of the Spirits of the Epoch. One can gain deep insight into the workings and weaving of evolution when one observes how people are placed in the appropriate positions in the world.

Let us now ascent to the Powers, for whom man as such is no longer there at all. We can then imagine in a different way what is involved in the development of the forces of nature. The lowest realm that would possibly be accessible by the Powers’ perception is that of the angels. Angels are to these highly sublime beings what the mineral kingdom is to us. On other occasions, we have already pointed out the workings of these Powers: Everything that goes beyond the individual human being, that is connected to the affairs of the whole planet, are the deeds of these Powers. If we trace our Earth back to the time when it, and with it the human being, emerged as a gradually forming entity, then we return to the Primordial Forces.

But if we wish to look at the life and emergence of the Earth itself, then we have to return to the Powers. They have nothing to do with individual human beings, but rather with the planetary genesis. We find these Powers in the Sun and Moon forces within ourselves. We know that humanity as such stands under the influence of these Sun and Moon forces. If the Sun forces only would work, the warm, fiery, light-giving Sun forces, then the human being would develop very fast—he would rush through one life. The delaying force is the force of the Moon, compelling him to take on form. If only these forces were at work, man would live only once, have only one incarnation, then he would die and mummify in his form. Earth would be covered by statues. If solely the Sun forces were at work, man would also go through only one incarnation, but in this incarnation he would live through all that he would otherwise go through in countless incarnations.

The collaboration of both forces establishes the right balance so that the human being can develop the way he does. The Moon on its own would cause mummification. Now the Moon rules the one incarnation; the Sun rules the subsequent incarnations from the outside, whilst the angels work from the inside. The nature and weaving of the Powers is revealed to us here. They are quite correctly described in the Bible as the Spirits of Light or Elohim, who existed before the Earth was created. One of them is Yahweh, who forces the human beings into form. In the working and weaving of the Powers, we see what is connected to the life of the whole planet. Here we have an opportunity to gain deep insight into the foundation of our world’s evolution.

However, we have also already heard that certain beings always remain behind in their development. The current Powers were previously Primordial Forces on the Moon. But there are Primordial Forces of the Moon that did not complete their set tasks and who came onto the Earth as Primordial Forces. They had not developed fast enough, although they were candidates to become Powers. The most outstanding of these Primordial Forces, who could actually be at the level of the Powers, is the entity commonly called Satan. Thus, he is at the rank of the Primordial Forces and could even be a Power. Amongst the Spirits that move the world forward, this Epochal Spirit works against the others. He is such a force on Earth as would have fitted on the old Moon, and he is still intimately connected with the forces of the old Moon. He is the Master of all obstacles and inhibitions that are placed in the path of the progressive Epochal Spirits. You will comprehend what it means when it was said that, in his life, Jesus Christ had to first overcome Satan, the Opponent of Progress, just at the moment of the greatest progress. Christ wanted to lead mankind in a mighty step forward, but first he had to overcome this adversary as the inhibitor and disruptor of this development, who wanted to prevent the Primordial Forces of our Earth from advancing further. Christian Esotericism calls these unlawful Primordial Forces Satanic Powers.

What is often called Providence presents itself quite definitively in detail as a group of beings. If man would once again be able to research the connection between sensory appearances and spiritual beings, he would understand many things better. Everything that appears to us in this world is an expression of spiritual beings.

You know, for example, that the planets, the celestial bodies, perform certain movements around themselves and around others. Why does this happen? The movement of the Earth around its axis was not always there. Why did it come about? The reason is that the human being at its present stage of development needs the alternation between day and night, between sleeping and waking. The macrocosm is most intimately connected to the microcosm—through the division of time, life is being regulated. During the time of the old Moon, it was quite different. There was a completely different time allocation, a quite different alternation between day and night, because the old Moon moved entirely differently. Those beings who nowadays direct these movements, have prepared these already in their own lives. Spiritual beings are behind those movements which are their deeds. In the future, mankind will recognise a deep wisdom in those movements.

A deep wisdom lies in the so-called “orbit” of the Earth around the Sun. Man will one day realise that something incredibly significant is happening there. Aren’t you surprised that I am saying “so-called” orbit. What is today taught in schools about the way the Earth moves around the Sun, is only the result of a mathematical example. It is not absolutely true. One day this explanation will also take on quite different forms. Even from a historical perspective people could inform themselves that it is not like that. It is quite a strange issue with the system of Copernicus.³ He founded his beliefs on three basic principles, of which only two were adopted by today’s science, and the third one was dropped under the table. In reality, the Sun races with high speed through space towards the constellation of Hercules. A movement, as it is usually described, is only feigned by the fact that the planets also move along. The true path of the Earth forms a corkscrew line⁴ . What is called theobliquity of the ecliptic is the gravity line between Sun and Earth. One has forgotten that the Earth turns once a year around the axis of the ecliptic, and this rotation combines itself with the corkscrew turn. Copernicus still differentiated between those two things, but nowadays it is not done anymore. The movement with the ecliptic was dropped. Therefore, it is not compatible with the facts when one says that the Earth turns around the sun. In reality, it is a corkscrew movement.

If the corkscrew line were a straight line, then progress would be immensely faster—Earth would have to travel along its path with incredible speed, and that would be exactly what the human being couldn’t cope with.

If the Earth would really pass through those spaces in a straight line, then man would become old immediately. As it is, the movement was amended in a wise way by the leading Spirits. The absolute progress is being delayed through a different way of movement. As you can see, there lies deep wisdom in the cosmos—this wisdom is the expression of the leading Spirits. We have been given angels and archangels as governors of our evolution. The forces that are working from incarnation to incarnation, that push man further, so that he will not become mummified, these are the governors of the future rotation times of Jupiter. Such Spirits that are standing above the human being and regulate his life, are therefore called the “Spirits of the Rotation of Time”, because their deeds will find expression later in the rotation times of the celestial bodies. The way the stars move today can be seen as the results of what higher beings have done in former times. In today’s humanity you can already recognise the future times of rotation. With this a tremendous spiritual life enters the celestial space, when we learn to look at it in this way.

Today, we only wanted to look at the characteristics of beings up to the Powers. We can imagine how the external is the expression of something internal. When what is said here fills humanity again, then much will change. We have now an immense low in academic education. The external progress is incompatible with the spiritual life. This would lead to a tremendous low if such truths were not made known and used to enlighten the science. People no longer know where to go with their materialistic science. Recently, a psychology book⁵ was published—one should not think that such a book has no effect just because the author is still unknown. The book explains that the law of the conservation of forces also applies to the soul, and that the inner manifestations of the soul consist only of a transformation of food. He roughly says, “For 10 years, it has been known with certainty that the so-called law of the conservation of forces is identical with the effects of the nervous system. One can prove that all that man absorbs in the form of energy from the consumption of food, is completely identical to that which he produces in work. Since one can prove exactly the same thing happens inside man as elsewhere in the world, there can, therefore, be no soul being. We are only dealing with the conversion of food into energy, which is given off again to the outside.”

This is a very smart conclusion. Just as well one could say: In front of a Bank are two people counting money that is carried in and out. The amounts are equal, therefore inside the bank there are no staff. But is not staff needed to manage everything? This example is on the same level as the psychologist’s opinion and a large part of what figures as science today. Everyone who even somehow considers this matter can imagine what a spiritual culture that thinks so little would lead to. It is necessary to possess spiritual knowledge, for only here the single real impulse is given to the development of humanity. If the human being does not find out what is behind the manifestations, then the world cannot be understood. One must arrive at the great, far-reaching, all-embracing laws, at the relationships of beings and worlds.

• 1. Refer to Dionysius Areopagita: The Hierarchies of the Angels and the Church, Barth Publishing House, Munich 1955. Dionysius Areopagita was a student of the Apostle Paul, by whom he was initiated into Christian esoteric. Initially his teachings were conveyed only verbally, and were written down only in the 5^th 1
• 2. Giordano Bruno, 1548-1600, Italian Philosopher.
• 3. Nicolaus Copernicus, 1473-1543, astronomer, founder of the modern heliocentric view of the cosmos.
• 4. See also to the more detailed description, of later years, of this topic inCorrespondences between Microcosm and Macrocosm. Man—Hieroglyph of the Universe, GA 201, and in The Relation of the different Branches of Natural Science to Astronomy, GA 323. 4
• 5. em>Outline of Psychology, Leipzig, 1908, by Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909), Professor of Philosophy in Halle, Leipzig. Ebbinghaus’ views, that Rudolf Steiner summarised, can be found in his book, page 37, in the section headed Interaction and Parallelism. He says there, “Since about one decade.... the preservation of energy in higher beings, for example in dogs, yes, recently also in humans, has been proven by experiments..... the source of the energy flow lies in the food consumed”. Ebbinghaus’ presentation culminates in the sentence, “Also in the organism of the human being there is consequently no space for the free activity of independent souls”.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For some time we have been occupied with gaining a more accurate knowledge of Man's relation to the universe, and today we would like to supplement our past studies. If we consider how Man lives in the present period of his evolution—taking this period so widely that it encompasses not only what is historical but also in part the pre-historical—we must conclude that speech is a preeminent characteristic at this moment of the cosmic evolution of mankind. It is speech that elevates Man above the other kingdoms of nature.

In the lectures last week, I mentioned that in the course of mankind's evolution, language, speech as a whole, has also undergone a development. I alluded to how, in very ancient times, speech was something that Man formed out of himself as his most primal ability; how, with the help of his organs of speech he was able to manifest the divine spiritual forces living within him. I also referred to how, in the transition from the Greek culture to the Roman-Latin culture, that is to say in the fourth Post-Atlantean period, the single sounds in language lose their names and, as in contemporary usage, merely have value as sounds. In Greek culture we still have a name for the first letter of the alphabet but in Latin it is just ‘A’. In passing from the Greek to the Latin culture something living in speech, something eminently concrete changes into abstraction. It might be said: as long as Man called the first letter of the alphabet ‘Alpha’, he experienced a certain amount of inspiration in it, but the moment he called it just ‘A’, the letters conformed to outer convention, to the prosaic aspects of life, replacing inspiration and inner experience. This constituted the actual transition from everything belonging to Greece to what is Roman-Latin—men of culture became estranged from the spiritual world of poetry and entered into the prose of life.

The people of Rome were a sober, prosaic race, a race of jurists, who brought prose and jurisprudence into the culture of later years. What lived in the people of Greece developed within mankind more or less like a cultural dream which men approach through their own revelations when they have inner experiences and wish to give expression to them. It might be said that all poetry has in it something which makes it appear to Europeans as a daughter of Greece, whereas all jurisprudence, all outer compartmentalization, all the prose of life, suggest descent from the Roman-Latin people.

I have previously called your attention to how a real understanding of the Alpha—Aleph in Hebrew—leads us to recognize in it the desire to express Man in a symbol. If one seeks the nearest modern words to convey the meaning of Alpha, these would be: ‘The one who experiences his own breathing’. In this name we have a direct reference to the Old Testament words: ‘And God formed Man ... and breathed into nostrils the breath of life’. What at that time was done with the breath, to make Man a Man of Earth, the being who had his Manhood imprinted on him by becoming the experiencer, the feeler of his own breathing, by receiving into himself consciousness of his breathing, is meant to be expressed in the first letter of the alphabet.

And the name ‘Beta’ considered with an open mind, turning here to the Hebrew equivalent, represents something of the nature of a wrapping, a covering, a house. Thus, if we were to put our experience on uttering ‘Alpha, Beta,’ into modern language we could say: ‘Man in his house’. And we could go through the whole alphabet in this way, giving expression to a concept, a meaning, a truth about Man simply by saying the names of the letters of the alphabet one after another. A comprehensive sentence would be uttered giving expression to the Mystery of Man. This sentence would begin by our being shown Man in his building, in his temple. The following parts of the sentence would go on to express how Man conducts himself in his temple and how he relates to the cosmos. In short, what would be expressed by speaking the names of the alphabet consecutively, would not be the abstraction we have today when we say A, B, C, without any accompanying thoughts, but it would be the expression of the Mystery of Man and of how his roots are in the universe.

When today, in various societies ‘the lost archetypal word’ is talked about, there is no recognition that it is actually contained in the sentence that comprises the names of the alphabet. Thus we can look back on a time in the evolution of humanity when Man, in repeating his alphabet, did not express what was related to external events, external needs, but what the divine spiritual mystery of his being brought to expression through his larynx and his speech organs.

It might be said that what belongs to the alphabet was applied later to external objects, and forgotten was all that can be revealed to Man through his speech about the mystery of his soul and spirit. Man's original word of truth, his word of wisdom, was lost. Speech was poured out over the matter-of-factness of life. In speaking today, Man is no longer conscious that the original primordial sentence has been forgotten; the sentence through which the divine revealed its own being to him. He is no longer aware that the single words, the single sentences uttered today, represent the mere shreds of that primordial sentence.

The poet, by avoiding the prose element in speech, and going back to the inner experience, the inner feeling, the inner formation of speech, attempts to return to its inspired archetypal element. One could perhaps say that every true poem, the humblest as well as the greatest, is an attempt to return to the word that has been lost, to retrace the steps from a life arranged in accordance with utility to times when cosmic being still revealed itself in the inner organism of speech.

Today we distinguish the consonant from the vowel element in speech. I have spoken of how it would appear to Man if he were to dive beneath the threshold of his consciousness. In ordinary consciousness memories are reflected upwards or, in other words, thoughts are reflections of what is experienced between birth and death. Normally we do not penetrate Man's actual being beyond this recollection, this thought left behind in memory. From another point of view I have indicated how, beneath the threshold of consciousness, there lives what may be called a universal tragedy of mankind. This can also be described in the following way: When Man wakes up in the morning and his ego and astral body dive down into his etheric body and his physical body, he does not perceive these bodies from within outwards, what he perceives is something quite different. We can get an idea of this by means of a diagram.

Let us say that here we have the boundary between the conscious and the unconscious, red representing the conscious, blue the unconscious. If a person sees something belonging to the outer world or to himself, for instance, if with his own eye he sees another Man's eye, then the visible rays which go out of his eye into the other Man are thrown back, and he experiences it in his consciousness. What he also bears of his own being beneath the threshold of consciousness he experiences in his astral body and his ego, but not in the ordinary waking state. It remains unconscious and essentially forms the actual content of the etheric and the physical bodies. The etheric body is never recognized at all by ordinary consciousness; it recognizes only the external aspect of the physical body. As I have mentioned in the past, we must plunge beneath memory to perceive the primal source of evil in human beings, but then something else can also be perceived, namely, an aspect of Man's connection with the cosmos.

We may, through appropriate meditation, succeed in penetrating the memory representations, as it were, to put aside what separates us inwardly from our etheric and physical bodies; if we then look down into the etheric body and the physical body so that we perceive what normally lies beneath the threshold of consciousness, we will hear something sounding within these bodies. And what sounds is the echo of the music of the spheres, which Man absorbed between death and new birth, during his descent out of the divine spiritual world into what is given to him through physical inheritance by parents and ancestors. In the etheric body and in the physical body there echoes the music of the spheres. In so far as it is of a vowel nature it echoes in the etheric body, and in the physical body in so far as it is of a consonant nature.

It is indeed true that Man, as he goes forward in the life between death and a new birth, raises himself to the world of the higher hierarchies. We have learned how Man in the world of the Angels, the Archangels, the Archai, joins in with their life and lives within the realm of the hierarchies, as here we live among the beings of the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms. After this life between death and a new birth he descends once more to earthly life. And we have also learned how on his way down he first gathers to him the influences of the firmament of the fixed stars, represented in the signs of the Zodiac; then, as he descends further, he takes with him the influence of the moving planets.

Now just picture to yourselves the Zodiac, the representation of the fixed stars. Man is exposed to their influence on descending from the life of soul and spirit into earthly life. If their effects are to be designated in accordance with their actual being we must say that they are cosmic music, they are consonants. And the forming of consonants in the physical body is the echo of what resounds from the single formations of the Zodiac, whereas the formation of vowels within the music of the spheres occurs through the movements of the planets in the cosmos. This is imprinted into the etheric body. Thus, in our physical body we unconsciously bear a reflection of the cosmic consonants, whereas in our etheric body we bear a reflection of the cosmic vowels. This remains, one might say, in the silence of the subconscious. But as the child develops, forces press upwards within the body and strengthen the speech organs; these are forces that, as reflections of the formative forces of the cosmos, build up the speech organs. The more interior speech organs are so formed out of Man's essential being that they can produce vowels, and the organs nearer to the periphery, the palate, the tongue, the lips and everything that contributes to the form of the physical body, are built up in such a way that consonants can be produced. While the child is learning to speak, something takes place in the upper part of his being, as a result of the activity of his lower part, which is a consequence of the formative forces taken up into the physical body, and also into the etheric body. (This is naturally not a material process but has to do with formative activity.) Thus when we speak, we bring to Manifestation what we might call an echo of the experience Man goes through with the cosmos in the life between death and a new birth during his descent out of the divine spiritual world. All the single letters of the alphabet are actually formed as images of what lives in the cosmos.

We can get an approximate idea of the signs of the Zodiac if we relate them to modern speech by setting up B, C, D, F, and so forth, as constellations of the Zodiac. You can follow them by feeling the revolution of the planets in H (ed.: ‘H’ like in him, her)—H is not actually a letter like the others, H imitates the rotational movement, the circling around. And the single planets in their revolutions are always the individual vowels which are placed in various ways in front of the consonants. If you imagine the vowel A to be placed in here (see diagram) you have the A in harmony with B and C, but in each vowel there is the H. You can trace it in speaking—AH, IH, EH. H is in each vowel. What does it signify that H is in each vowel? It signifies that the vowel is revolving in the cosmos. The vowel is not at rest, it circles around in the cosmos. And the circling, the moving, is expressed in the H hidden in each of the vowels. Consider, therefore, a vowel harmony expressed somewhere in speech: let us say I, O, U, A. (ed.: IH, OH, UH, AH in German) What is expressed by this? Something is expressed that is the cosmic working of four planets. Let us add one of the consonants to something like this—IOSUA—let us add this S in the middle of it, and this would mean that not only the forming of vowels within the planetary spheres is expressed, but also the effect that the planets connected with I, O, U, A, experience in their movement through the connection with the star sign S. Thus if a Man in the days of ancient civilization uttered the name of a God in vowels, a planetary mystery was expressed. The deed of a divine being within the planetary world was expressed in the name. Were a divine name expressed with a consonant in it, the deed of the divine being concerned reached in thought to the representative of the fixed star firmament—the Zodiac.

When there was still an instinctive understanding of these things, in the time of atavistic clairvoyance, clairaudience, and so on, a connection with the cosmos was experienced in human speech. When speaking, Man felt himself within the cosmos. When the child learned to speak it was felt how what was experienced in the divine spiritual world before birth, or before conception, gradually evolved out of the being of the child.

It may be said that if a Man could look through himself inwardly he would have to admit: I am an etheric body, in other words, I am the echo of cosmic vowels; I am a physical body, in other words, the echo of cosmic consonants. Because I stand here on the earth, there sounds through my being an echo of all that is said by the signs of the Zodiac; and the life of this echo is my physical body. An echo is formed of all that is said by the planetary spheres and this echo is my etheric body.

1. Physical body = Echo of the Zodiac
2. Etheric body = Echo of the planetary movements
3. Astral body = Experience of the planetary movements
4. Ego = perception of the echo of the Zodiac

Nothing is said, my dear friends, by repeating that Man consists of physical body and etheric body. Those are no more than vague, indefinite words. If we want to speak in a real language, which can be learned from the mysteries of the cosmos, we would have to say: Man is constituted out of the echo of the heavens, of the fixed stars, of the echo of the planetary movements, of what is experienced of the echo of the planetary movements, and of what knowingly experiences the echo of the fixed star heavens. Then we would have expressed in real cosmic speech what is abstractly expressed by the words: Man is made up of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. We remain entirely in the abstract by saying: Man is composed first of physical body, secondly of etheric body, thirdly of astral body, fourthly of ego. But we pass into concrete cosmic speech if we say: Man consists of the echo of the Zodiac, of the echo of the planetary movements, of the experience of the impression of the planetary movements in thinking, feeling and willing, and in the perception of the echo of the Zodiac. The first is abstraction, the second reality.

When you say ‘I’, what is that exactly? Now just imagine someone had planted trees in a beautifully artistic order. Each individual tree can be seen. However at a distance all the trees resolve into a single point. Take all the individual things—all that resounds from the Zodiac in the way of world consonants, then go far enough away: Everything that is formed as inward sound, in the most manifold way, is compressed within you to the single point ‘I’.

It is an actual fact that this name which Man gives himself is really only an expression for what we perceive in the measureless spaces of the universe. Everywhere it is necessary to go back to what, as reflection, as echo, appears here upon earth. Thus, when the matter is seen in its reality, before Man's higher and inward experience, everything out of which Man builds himself up as a phenomenon, as pure experience, melts away. If we look upon Man and gradually learn to know his true nature, then his physical body actually ceases to be in the way it normally confronts us and otherwise stands before us, our vision widens and Man grows into the heavens of the fixed stars. The etheric body, too, ceases to be before us. Vision is extended, experience is extended, and we arrive at a perception of planetary life, for this human etheric body is a mere reflection of planetary life.

Man standing before you is nothing but the phenomenon, the appearance, the image, of what goes on in the life of the planets. We think we have an individual human being in front of us, but this individual is a picture, on a certain spot, of the whole world. What then is the reason for the difference between an Asiatic and an American? The reason is that the starry heavens are portrayed at two different earthly points, just as we have various pictures of one and the same external fact. It is indeed true that when we observe Man the world begins to dawn upon us, and by such observation we are faced by the great mystery of the extent to which Man is an actual pictured microcosm of the reality of the macrocosm.

Now of what does modern life consist? When we look back from these modern times upon mankind's life in primeval times, we still find an experience of Man's connection with the spiritual world in the instinctive consciousness of those ancient days. In the alphabet we can have a concrete experience of this. When, in primeval words, Man had to express the rich store of the divine in all its fullness, he uttered the letters of the alphabet. When he expressed the mystery of his own nature, in the way he learned about it in the Mysteries, then he voiced how he had descended through Saturn or Jupiter in their stellar relation to the Lion or the Virgin, in other words, how he had descended through the A or the I in their relation to the M or the L. He gave utterance to what he had then experienced of the music of the spheres, and that was his cosmic name. And in those ancient days men were instinctively aware that they brought a name down with them from the cosmos to the Earth.

Since then Christian consciousness still preserves this primeval consciousness in an abstract way by consecrating individual days to the memory of saints, who, rightly understood, should give new life to the spiritual cosmos. By being born on a particular day of the year we should receive the name of the saint whose day it is on the calendar. What is meant to be expressed here in a more abstract way, was more concretely expressed in primeval times, when in the Mysteries the cosmic name of a person was found in accordance with what he experienced as he descended to earth, when with his being he created vowels with the planets and added them to the consonants of the Zodiac. The various groups of the human race had many names then, but these names were conceived in such a way that they harmonized with the universal all-embracing name.

Considered from this point of view, what was the alphabet? It was what the heavens revealed through their fixed stars and through the planets moving across them. When the alphabet was spoken out of the original, instinctive, human wisdom it was astronomy that was expressed. What was spoken through the alphabet and what was taught in astronomy in those olden days was one and the same thing. The wisdom in the astronomy of those times was not presented in the same way as the learning contained in any branch of knowledge today, which is built up from single perceptions and concepts. It was conceived as a revelation that made itself felt on the surface of human experience, either in the form of an axiomatic truth or as part of an axiomatic truth. Thus a concrete experience was represented with a part of the primal wisdom. And there was something of quite a dim consciousness connected with the fact that, in the Middle Ages, those who were highly educated still had to learn grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. In this ascent through the various spheres of learning lies a half conscious recognition of something, which in earlier days, existed in instinctive clarity. Today grammar has become very abstract. Going back into times of which history tells us nothing, but which, nevertheless, are still historical times, we find that grammar was not the abstract subject it is today but that men were led through grammar into the mystery of the individual letters. They learned that the secrets of the cosmos found expression in the letters. The single vowel was brought into connection with its planet, the single consonant with the single sign of the Zodiac; thus, through the letters of the alphabet, Man gained knowledge of the stars.

Passing from grammar to rhetoric entailed the application of what lived in Man as active astronomy. And by rising to dialectics one came in thought to comprehending and working on what lived in Man out of astronomy. Arithmetic was not taught as the abstraction of today, but as the entity expressed in the mystery of numbers. Number itself was looked upon differently from how it is done today. I will give you a trifling instance of this.

How does one picture 1, 2, 3 to oneself today? It is done by thinking of a pea, then of another pea, and this makes two; then another is added and there are three. It is a matter of adding one to another—piling them up. In olden days one did not count in this way. A start was made with a unit. And by splitting the unit into two parts one had 2. Thus 2 was not arrived at by adding one unit to another. It was not a putting together of units, but the two were contained in the one. Three was contained in the one in a different way—four again in a different way. The unit embraced all numbers and was the greatest. Today the unit is the smallest. Everything today is atomistically conceived. The unit is one member and the two is added to it, this is all imagined atomistically. The original idea was organic. There the unit is the greatest and the following numbers always appear as being smaller and are all contained in the unit. Here we come to quite different mysteries in the world of numbers.

These mysteries in the world of numbers give the merest intimation that here we are not concerned with what merely lives in the hollow of Man's head. (I say the hollow of his head because I have often shown it really to be hollow from the spiritual point of view.) In the relations of number we can come to perceive the relations of the objectivity of the world. If we always just add one to one naturally this is something that has nothing to do with the facts. I have a piece of chalk. If beside it I place a second piece of chalk this has nothing to do with the first. The one is not concerned with the other. If, however, I presuppose that everything is a unit and now pass to the numbers contained in this unit, I get a two in a way that is a matter of some consequence. I have to break up the piece. I then get right into reality.

Thus after being borne up in dialectics to grasping the thought of the astronomical, one reached still further into the cosmos with arithmetic and in a similar way with geometry. From geometry one got the feeling that the geometrical, thought concretely, was the music of the spheres. This is the difference between what holds good today and what once existed in the instinctive wisdom of primeval times. Take music today—the mathematical physicist reckons the pitch of a note, for example, reckons which pitch is at work in a melody. Then anyone who is musical is obliged to forget his music and enter the sphere of the abstract if, being a keen musician, he has not already run away from the mathematician. Man is led away from immediate experience into abstraction and this has very little to do with experience.

In itself it is really interesting—if one has a mathematical bent—to press on from the musical into the sphere of acoustics, but one does not gain much in the way of musical experience. That someone today learns geometry and as he proceeds begins to experience forms as musical notes, that is to say, if he rises from the 5th to the 6th grade, and makes geometry sound musically, all this, as far as I know, does not enter the curriculum. But that was once the meaning of rising to the sixth part of what was to be learned—from geometry to music. And only then did the archetypal, underlying reality become an experience. The astronomy in the subconscious then became something that one consciously mastered as astronomy, as the highest and 7th member of the so-called Trivium and Quadrivium.

The history of Man should be studied in accordance with the development of his consciousness for then we can gain a feeling that consciousness must return to these matters. That is just what is attempted in anthroposophical Spiritual Science. There is no need to marvel that those who are accustomed to accept the recognized science of the day find nothing right in what I have written, for example, in Occult Science. It is necessary, however, that Man should go back, in a fully conscious way, to the true reality which for a time had to recede into the background to enable Man to develop his freedom. Man would have been able ever more strongly to develop the consciousness of how necessary it is for him to stand within a divine cosmic world, had he not been cast out of this cosmos into the merely phenomenal, into pure appearance, so strongly indeed that the whole manifold splendor and majesty of the starry sky was condensed into the abstract ego.

This was a necessary step in the struggle for freedom. For Man could develop his freedom only by pressing together quite indistinguishably into the single point of the ego something that, filled out by the whole of cosmic space, streamed through all time. But he would lose his being, he would no longer know or possess himself, no longer be active and act on his own initiative, were he not to reconquer the whole world from this single point of his ego, were he not to rise again from the abstract to the concrete. It is indeed important to understand how, in passing from the Greek to the Latin culture, abstraction took hold of European culture and thus resulted in the loss of the primeval word. It must be remembered that the Latin language was for a long time the language of the cultural elite. What persisted however, was a kind of desperate holding on to what this Latin language had actually already discarded. And what had been spoken in the Greek world then remained behind only in thought. Of the logos there remained logic—abstract thought.

In the longing that a Man such as Goethe had for knowledge of the Greek culture, there lies something that may be expressed as follows: he longed for liberation from the abstraction of modern times, from the dry prose of Romanism. He wanted to reach the other daughter of the primeval wisdom of the world, what remained of all that stood for Greece.—We too must experience something of this kind if we wish to understand Goethe's intense yearning for the South. In modern school biographies we find nothing of all this. Only when in every individual thing there echoes a consciousness of Man being an expression of the whole cosmos, will the way be cleared for the forces needed for Man's progress, if civilization is not to decline into utter barbarism.

I have said on many occasions that at the time when medieval culture had reached its prime, two streams of spiritual life were flowing through the ripest souls in European civilisation—streams which I have described as knowledge through revelation and knowledge acquired by reason, as we find it in Scholasticism. Knowledge through revelation, in its more scholastic form, was by no means a body of mystical, abstract or indefinite thought. It expressed itself in sharply defined, clear-cut concepts. But these concepts were considered to be beyond the scope of man's ordinary powers of cognition and must in every case be accepted as traditions of the Church. The Church, by virtue of its continuity, claimed the right to be the guardian of this kind of knowledge.

The second kind of knowledge was held to be within the scope of research and investigation, albeit those who stood wholly within the stream of Scholasticism acknowledged that this knowledge acquired by reason could not in any sense be regarded as knowledge emanating from the super-sensible world.

Thus when medieval culture was at its prime, it was realised that knowledge no longer accessible to mankind in that age must be preserved as it were by tradition. But it was not always so, for if we go back through the Middle Ages to the first Christian centuries we shall find that the characteristics of this knowledge through revelation was less sharply emphasised than they were in medieval culture. If one had suggested to a Greek philosopher of the Athenian School, for instance, that a distinction could be made between knowledge acquired by reason and knowledge through revelation (in the sense in which the latter was understood in the Middle Ages), he would have been at a loss to know what was meant. It would have been unthinkable to him that if knowledge concerning super-sensible worlds had once been communicated to a man by cosmic powers, it could not be communicated afresh. True, the Greeks realised that higher spiritual knowledge was beyond the reach of man's ordinary cognition, but they knew too that by dint of spiritual training and through Initiation, a man could unfold higher faculties of knowledge and that by these means he would enter a world where super-sensible truth would be revealed to him.

Now a change took place in Western culture between all that lived in the centuries when Greek philosophy came to flower in Plato and Aristotle, and the kind of knowledge that made its appearance about the end of the fourth century A.D. I have often referred to one aspect of this change by saying that the Mystery of Golgotha occurred in an age when very much of the old Initiation-wisdom was still living in men. And indeed there were many who applied their Initiation-wisdom and were thus able, with super-sensible knowledge, to realise the significance of the Event on Golgotha. Those who had been initiated strained every nerve to understand how a Being like the Christ, Who before the Mystery of Golgotha had not been united with earthly evolution, had passed into an earthly body and linked Himself with the evolution of man. The nature of this Being, how He had worked before His descent to the earth—such were the questions which even at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha men were trying to answer by means of the highest faculties of Initiation-wisdom.

But then we find that from the fifth century A.D. onwards, this old Initiation-wisdom which had lived in Asia Minor, Northern Africa, in Greek culture, had spread over into Italy and still further into Europe, was less and less understood. People spoke contemptuously of certain individuals, saying that their teachings were to be avoided at all costs by true Christians. Moreover, efforts were made to obliterate all that had previously been known of these individuals.

It is strange that a man like Franz Brentano should have inherited from medieval tradition a hatred of all that lived in personalities like Plotinus, for example, of whom very little was known but who was regarded as one with whom true Christians could have no dealings. Brentano had allowed himself to be influenced by this hatred and vented it on Plotinus. He actually wrote a polemical thesis entitled Was für ein Philosoph manchmal Epoche macht, and the philosopher is Plotinus, who lived in the third century A.D. Plotinus lived within the streams of spiritual life which were wholly exhausted by the time of the fourth century A.D. and which in the later evolution of Christendom people tried to cast into oblivion.

The information contained in text-books on the history of philosophy in regard to the outstanding figures of the early Christian centuries is usually not only scanty in the extreme but quite incapable of giving any idea of their significance. Naturally it is difficult for us in modern times to have any true conception of the first three or four centuries of Christendom—for example, of the way in which the impulses living in Plato and Aristotle were working on and of thought which had in a certain respect become estranged from the deeper Mystery-wisdom, although this wisdom was still possessed by certain personalities in the first three or four centuries after the coming of Christ.

Very little real understanding of Plato is shown in modern text-books on the history of philosophy. Those of you who are interested should read the chapter on Plato in Paul Deussen's History of Greek Philosophy, and the passage where he speaks of the place assigned by Plato to the Idea of the Good in relation to the other Ideas. Deussen says something like this: Plato did not admit the existence of a personal God because, if he had done so, he could not have taught that the Ideas subsist in and through themselves. Plato could not acknowledge God as a Being because the Ideas are primary and subsistent. True—says Deussen—Plato places the Idea of the Good above the other Ideas, but he did not thereby imply that the Idea of the Good stands above the others.—For what is expressed in the Idea of the Good is, after all, only a kind of family-likeness which is present in all the Ideas.—Such is Deussen's argument.

But now let us scrutinise this logic more closely. The Ideas are there. They are subsistent and independent. The Idea of the Good cannot be said to rule or direct the other Ideas. All Ideas bear a family-likeness but this family-likeness is actually expressed through the Idea of the Good. Yes—but whence are family-likenesses derived? A family-likeness is derived from stock. The Idea of the Good points to family-likeness. What can we do except go back to the father of the stock!

This is what we find to-day in famous histories of philosophy and those who write them are regarded as authorities. People read such things and never notice that they are out-and-out nonsense. It is difficult to imagine that anyone capable of writing such absurdities in connection with Greek philosophy could have anything very valuable to say about Indian wisdom. Nevertheless, if we ask for something authoritative on the subject of Indian wisdom to-day we shall certainly be advised to read Paul Deussen. Things have come to a pretty pass!

My only object in saying this is to show that in the present age there is little real understanding of Platonic philosophy. Modern intellectualism is incapable of it. Nor is it possible to understand the tradition which exists in regard to Plotinus—the so-called Neo-Platonic philosopher Plotinus was a pupil of Ammonius Saccas who lived at the beginning of the third century A.D. It is said that Ammonius Saccas gave instruction to individual pupils but left nothing in writing. Now the reason why the eminent teachers of that age wrote nothing down was because they held that wisdom must be something living, that it could not be passed on by writing but only from man to man, in direct personal intercourse. Something else—again not understood—is said of Ammonius Saccas, namely that he tried to bring about agreement in the terrible quarrels between the adherents of Aristotle and of Plato, by showing that there was really no discrepancy between the teachings of Plato and Aristotle.

Let me try to tell you in brief words how Ammonius Saccas spoke of Plato and Aristotle. He said: Plato belonged to an epoch when many human souls were treading the path to the spiritual world in other words when there was still knowledge of the principles of true Initiation. But in more ancient times there was no such thing as abstract, logical thought. Even now (at the beginning of the third century A.D.) only the first, elementary traces of this kind of thinking are making their appearance. In Plato's time, thoughts evolved independently were unknown. Whereas the Initiates of earlier times gave their message in pictures and imaginations, Plato was one of the first to change these imaginations into abstract concepts and ideas. The great spiritual picture to which Plato tried to lift the eyes of men was brought down in more ancient times merely in the form of imaginations. In Plato, the imaginations were already concepts—but these concepts poured down as it were from the world of Divine Spirit. Plato said in effect: the Ideas are the lowest revelation of the Divine-Spiritual. Aristotle could no longer penetrate with the same intensity into this spiritual substance. Therefore the knowledge he possessed only amounted to the substance of the ideas, and this is at a lower level than the picture itself. Nevertheless, Aristotle could still receive the substance of the ideas in the form of revelation. There is no fundamental difference between Plato and Aristotle—so said Ammonius Saccas—except that Plato was able to gaze into higher levels of the spiritual world than Aristotle.—And thereby Ammonius Saccas thought to reconcile the disputes among the followers of Aristotle and Plato.

We learn, then, that by the time of Plato and Aristotle, wisdom was already beginning to assume a more intellectual form. Now in those ancient times it was still possible for individuals here and there to rise to very high levels of spiritual perception. The lives of men like Ammonius Saccas and his pupil Plotinus were rich in spiritual experiences and their conceptions of the spiritual world were filled with real substance.

Naturally one could not have spoken to such men of outer Nature in the sense in which we speak of Nature to-day. In their schools they spoke of a spiritual world, and Nature—generally regarded nowadays as complete and all-embracing—was merely the lowest expression of that spiritual world of which they were conscious.

We can form some idea of how such men were wont to speak, if we study Iamblichus, a man possessed of deep insight and one of the successors of Ammonius Saccas. How did the world appear to the soul of Iamblichus? He spoke to his pupils somewhat as follows:—If we would understand the universe let us not pay heed to space, for space contains merely the outward expression of the spiritual world. Nor let us pay heed to time, for only the illusory images of cosmic reality arise in time. Rather must we look up to those Powers in the spiritual world who are the Creators of time and of the connections between time and space. Gazing out into the expanses of the cosmos, we see how the cycle, repeated visibly in the Sun, repeats itself every year. But the Sun circles through the Zodiac, through the twelve constellations. It is not enough merely to observe this phenomenon, for three hundred and sixty heavenly Powers are working and weaving therein, sending forth the Sun-forces which flood the whole universe accessible to man. Every year the cycle is repeated. If these Powers alone held sway, there would be three hundred and sixty days in a year. But there are, in fact, five additional days, ruled by seventy-two sub-heavenly Powers, the planetary Spirits. I will draw (on the blackboard) this pentagonal figure, because one to five is the relation of seventy-two to three hundred and sixty. The five remaining days in the cosmic year which are abandoned, as it were, by the three hundred and sixty heavenly Powers, are ruled by the seventy-two sub-heavenly Powers. But over and above the three hundred and sixty-five days, there are still a few more hours in the year. And these hours are directed by forty-two earthly Powers.—Iamblichus also said to his pupils: The three hundred and sixty heavenly Powers are connected with the head-organisation of man, the seventy-two sub-heavenly Powers with the breast-system (breathing-process and heart) and the forty-two earthly Powers with the purely earthly system in man (e.g. digestion, metabolism).

In those times the human being was given his place in a spiritual universe, whereas nowadays we begin our physiological studies by learning of the quantities of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulphur, phosphorus, lime-stone, etc., within the human organism. We relate the human being to a lifeless nature. But Iamblichus would have taught how the organism of man is related to the forty-two earthly Powers, the seventy-two sub-heavenly or planetary Powers, and the three hundred and sixty heavenly Powers. Just as to-day man is said to be composed of earthly substances, in the time of Iamblichus he was known to represent a confluence of forces streaming from the spiritual universe. Great and sublime was the wisdom presented in the schools of learning in those days, and one can readily understand that Plotinus—who had reached the age of twenty-eight before he listened to the teachings of Ammonius Saccas—felt himself living in an altogether different world. He was able to assimilate some of this wisdom because it was still cultivated in many places during the first four centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha. With this wisdom men also tried to understand the descent of the Christ into Jesus of Nazareth and the place of Christ in the realms of the spiritual Hierarchies, in the great structure of the spiritual universe.

And now let me deal with another chapter of the wisdom taught by Iamblichus. He said: There are three hundred and sixty heavenly Powers, seventy-two planetary Powers, forty-two earthly Powers—in all, four hundred and seventy-four Divine Beings of different orders. Look to the far East—so said Iamblichus—and you will there find peoples who give names to their Gods. Turn to the Egyptians and to other peoples—they too name their Gods. Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans—all will name their Gods. The four hundred and seventy-four Gods include all the Gods of all the different peoples: Zeus, Apollo, Baal—all the Gods. The reason why the peoples have different Gods is that one race has chosen twelve or maybe seventeen Gods from the four hundred and seventy-four, another race has taken twenty-five, another three, another four. The number of racial Gods is four hundred and seventy-four. And the highest of these Gods, the God who came down to earth at a definite point of time, is Christ.

This wisdom was well suited to bring about reconciliation between the different religions, not as the outcome of vague sentiment but of the knowledge that the different Gods of the peoples constitute, in their totality, one great system—the four hundred and seventy-four Gods. It was taught that all the choirs of Gods of the peoples of ancient times had reached their climax in Christianity and that the crown of wisdom was to understand how the Christ Being had entered through Jesus of Nazareth into His earthly activity.

And so, as we look back to an earlier Spiritual Science (which although it no longer exists in that form to-day, indeed cannot do so for it must be pursued now-a-days in a different way), the deepest respect grows up within us. Profound wisdom was taught in the early Christian centuries in regard to the super-sensible worlds. But knowledge of this spiritual universe was imparted only to those who were immediate pupils of the older Initiates. The wisdom might only be passed on to those whose faculties of knowledge had reached the stage where they were able to understand the essence and being of the different Gods.

This requisite of spiritual culture was recognised everywhere in Greece, in Egypt and in Asia Minor. It is, of course, true, that remnants of the ancient wisdom still existed in Roman civilisation. Plotinus himself taught for a long time in Italy. But a spirit of abstraction had crept into Roman culture, a spirit no longer capable of understanding the value and worth of personality, of being. The spirit of abstraction had crept in, not yet in the form it afterwards assumed, but adhered to all the more firmly because it was there in its earliest beginnings.

And then, on the soil of Italy at the beginning of the fourth century A.D. we find a School which began to oppose the ancient principle of Initiation, the preparation of the individual for Initiation. We see a School arising which gathers together and makes a careful record of everything originating from ancient Initiation-wisdom. The aim of this School—which lasted beyond the third on into the fourth century—was to perpetuate the essence of Roman culture, to establish historical tradition as against the strivings of individual human Beings. As Christianity began to find its way into Roman culture, the efforts of this school were directed to the elimination of all that could still have been discovered by means of the old Initiation-knowledge in regard to the presence of Christ in the personality of Jesus.

It was a fundamental tenet of this Roman School that the teaching given by Ammonius Saccas and Iamblichus must not be allowed to pass on to posterity. Just as in those times there was a widespread impulse to destroy the ancient temples and altars—in short to obliterate every remnant of ancient Heathendom—so, in the domain of spiritual life, efforts were made to wipe out the principles whereby knowledge of the higher world might be attained. To take one example: the dogma of the One Divine Nature or of the Two Divine Natures in the Person of Christ was substituted for the teaching of Ammonius Saccas and Iamblichus, namely, that the individual human being can develop to a point where he will understand how the Christ took up His abode in the body of Jesus. This dogma was to reign supreme and the possibility of individual insight smothered. The ancient path of wisdom was superseded by dogma in the culture of the Roman world. And because strenuous efforts were made to destroy any teaching that savoured of the ancient wisdom, little more than the names of men like Ammonius Saccas and Iamblichus have come down to us. Of many other teachers in the Southern regions of Europe not even the names have been preserved. Altars were destroyed, temples burnt to the ground and the ancient teachings exterminated, to such an extent indeed that we have no longer any inkling to-day of the wisdom that lived in the South of Europe during the first four centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha.

Again and again it happened, however, that knowledge of this wisdom found its way to men who were interested in these matters and who realised that Roman culture was rapidly falling to pieces under the spread of Christianity. But after the extermination of what would have been so splendid a preparation for an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, it was only possible to learn of the union of Christ with Jesus in the form of an abstract dogma laid down by the Councils and coloured by the Roman spirit. The living wisdom was wiped out, and abstraction, albeit working on in the guise of revelation, took its place.

History is well-nigh blank in regard to these things, but during the first centuries of Christendom there were a number of men who were able to say: “There are indeed Initiates—of whom Iamblichus was one. It is the Initiates who teach true Christianity. To them, Christ is Christ indeed, whereas the Romans speak merely of the ‘Galileans.’ ” This expression was used in the third and fourth centuries A.D. to gloss over a deep misunderstanding. The less men understood Christianity, the more they spoke of the Galileans; the less they knew of the Christ, the more emphasis they laid on the human personality of the ‘Galilean.’

Out of this milieu came Julian, the so-called Apostate, who had absorbed a very great deal from pupils of men like Iamblichus and who still knew something of the spiritual universe reaching down into every phenomenon of Nature. Julian the Apostate had heard from pupils of Iamblichus of the spiritual forces working down into every animal and plant from the three hundred and sixty heavenly Powers, the seventy-two planetary Powers and the forty-two earthly Powers. In those days there were still some who understood what was, for example, expressed in a most wonderful way in a deeply significant legend related of Plotinus. The legend ran: There were many who would no longer believe that a man could be inspired by the Divine Spirit and who said that anyone who claimed to have knowledge of the Divine-Spiritual world was possessed by a demon. Plotinus was therefore carried off to the temple of Isis in Egypt in order that the priests might determine the nature of the demon possessing him. And when the Egyptian priests—who still had knowledge of these things—came to the temple and tested Plotinus before the altar of Isis, performing all the ritual acts still possible at that time, Lo! instead of a demon there appeared the Godhead Himself!

This legend indicates that in those times men still acknowledged that at least it was possible to prove whether a good God or a demon was possessing a human being.

Julian the Apostate heard of these things. But on the other side there came insistently to his ears the words of a writing which passed into many hands in the Roman world during the first Christian centuries and was said to be a sermon of the Apostle Peter, whereas it was actually a forgery. In this document it was said: Behold the godless Hellenes! In very creatures of nature they see the Divine-Spiritual. This is sinful, impious. It is sacrilege to see the Divine-Spiritual in Nature, in animal and in plant. Let no man be so sinful as to believe that the Divine is present in the course of the Sun and Moon.—These were the things that dinned in the ears of Julian, now from one side, now from another. A deep love for Hellenism grew up within him and he became the tragic figure who would fain have spoken of Christianity in the light of the teachings of Iamblichus.

There is no telling what would have come to pass in Europe if the Christianity of Julian the Apostate had conquered instead of the doctrines of Rome, if his desire to restore the Initiation-training had been fulfilled the training whereby men could themselves have attained to knowledge of how the Christ had lived in Jesus and of His place among the other racial Gods. Julian the Apostate was not out to destroy the heathen temples. Indeed he would have been willing to restore the temple of the Jews at Jerusalem. His desire was to restore the heathen temples and he also had the interests of the Christians at heart. Truth and truth alone was his quest. And the great obstacle in his way was the School in ancient Rome of which I have spoken—the School which not only set out to exterminate the old principle of Initiation but did in fact succeed in exterminating it, wishing to put in its place recorded traditions of Initiation-wisdom.

When the moment had arrived, it was easy to arrange for the thrust of the Persian spear which caused Julian's death. It was then that the words were uttered which have never since been understood, not even by Ibsen, but which can be explained by a knowledge of the traditions of Julian's time: ‘The Galilean has conquered, not the Christ!’ For at this moment of death it was revealed to the prophetic vision of Julian the Apostate that henceforward the conception of Christ as a Divine Being would fade away and that the ‘Galilean,’ the man of Galilean stock would be worshipped as a God. In the thirtieth year of his life Julian the Apostate had a pre-vision of the whole of subsequent evolution, on into the nineteenth century, by which time theology had lost all knowledge of the Christ in Jesus.

Julian was ‘Apostate’ only in regard to what was to come after. The Apostate was indeed the Apostle in respect of spiritual realisation of the Mystery of Golgotha.—And it is this spiritual realisation that must be quickened again in the souls of men.

Newer geological strata always overlay those that are older and the newer must be pierced before we can reach those that lie below. It is sometimes difficult to believe beneath what thick layers the history of human evolution lies concealed. Thick indeed are the layers spread by Romanism over the first conceptions of the Mystery of Golgotha! Through spiritual knowledge it must again be possible to penetrate through these layers and so rediscover that old wisdom which was swept away from the domain of spiritual life just as the heathen altars were swept away from the physical world.

Egyptian priests declared that Plotinus bore a God within him, not a demon. But in the West the dictum went forth that Plotinus was assuredly possessed by a demon. Read what has been said on the subject, including the thesis by Brentano which I have mentioned, and you will find the same. According to the Egyptian priests, a God and not a demon was living in Plotinus, the philosopher of the third century A.D. But Brentano states the contrary. He declares: Plotinus was possessed by a demon, not by a God!

And then, in the nineteenth century, the Gods became demons, the demons Gods. Men were no longer capable of distinguishing between Gods and demons in the universe. And this has lived on in the chaos of our civilisation.

Truly these things are grave when we see them as they really are. I wished to-day to speak of one chapter of history and from an absolutely objective standpoint, for what comes to pass in history is after all inevitable. Necessary as it was that for a season men should remain without enlightenment about certain mysteries, enlightenment must ultimately be given, and—what is more—received.

When we try to ascertain man's position in the Universe as a whole, it is a question of turning our attention not only to Space but to Time. Anyone who follows the history of human evolution at all, will find that it is a peculiarity of the Oriental conception of the Universe to set Space in the foreground, not leaving Time wholly disregarded, but placing everything pertaining to Space in the foreground. The peculiarity of the Western conception of the Universe is to reckon to a very special degree with Time, and it is precisely this regard for the temporal in human evolution and the Universe which must have primary consideration in a right view of the Christ-Force. To recognise the full significance of the Christ-Force in human evolution on Earth, we must be able to place Man himself correctly in the whole Universe, in a temporal sense. The customary belief in the law of the conservation of force, and especially that of the conservation of substance, hinders this. The law of the conservation of force is one which would so place Man in the Universe that he stands there as a mere product of nature. Attempts have been made to discover the procedure of the transformation through combustion of what man takes in as nourishment, and to find out how the heat of combustion is set up and how other forces arise in man as transformed forces of the food. Such attempts have already been made in modern times by students. They are like thoughts which find expression somewhat in the following way. A man sees a building, he hears that it is a Bank, and endeavours by some method to calculate how much money is put into the Bank and how much taken out; and finding that the amounts are the same, draws the conclusion that the money has either transformed itself in there or has remained the same, but that there are no officials there in the Bank at all. This is approximately the logic of the thought that whatever a man has eaten may be found again in the transformed forces of his calefaction, his activity. Here too courage is lacking actually to put to the test the depth of thought underlying these modern principles. One might indeed arrive at many things by testing what we find in modern science; one has only to test its logic and more especially its reality.

Now the point is that on account of a mass of unreality and of illogical methods of thought, man is placed in the dilemma in which, as I have already pointed out, on the one hand stand ideals, as secondary effects, and on the other, natural occurrences; and we can find no means of building a bridge between them. At most an attempt is made today by chatterers in the sphere of philosophy to talk of natural occurrences in a way which flatters the primitive thought of man; this kind of talk has no desire to go into anything concrete, but prefers to acquiesce in such nonsense as that of Eucken or Bergson. What is of real consequence is, first of all, that one should ask oneself: What it is that man bears within him out of the whole compass of the Universe? What enables him as a member of the Universe so to work with his Ego, that one can see that what results from his activity is his own? Now of all things of the Universe, of all properties of being in the Universe, one such property is easier to study than others, if one only sets aside the prejudices of modern science, and that is the element of heat.

Certainly it must be said in the first place that even the animal world, and perhaps to some extent the plant world, have heat of their own; but the heat of the higher animal world and of man can be distinguished from other kinds of individual heat. And it is necessary to enquire now into what may be called the heat peculiar to man. For in this particular heat (leaving aside for the moment that of the animal, although what I am saying does not contradict the facts in the animal world; but it would lead us too far to include it in our present observations), in what man possesses as his own heat—in this he has his inmost corporeality, his inmost bodily field of activity. Our attention is not drawn to this, only because it escapes ordinary observation that the element of soul and spirit dwelling in man finds its immediate continuation in the effect it has on the heat within him. In speaking of man's bodily nature pure and simple, one should really speak of his heat-body. When we see a man before us, we are also confronted by an enclosed heat-space, which is at a higher temperature than its environment. In this increased temperature lives the soul and spirit element of man, and the soul and spirit in him is indirectly conveyed by means of the heat, to his other organs. In this way too, man's Will comes into existence.

The Will comes into being through the fact that in the first instance man's heat is acted upon, then his lung-organisation, thence his fluid-organisation, and thence only what is mineral or solid in his organism. Thus the human organisation must be represented as follows: The first part to be acted upon is the heat, then through heat the air is worked upon; thence an influence acts upon the water—the fluid-organism—and thence upon the solid organisation. (I have drawn attention to the fact that the solid part of man's organisation is the smallest, for he is more than 75% water-body.) This fact, that we really live and move in our heat element, is one of the physiological facts which we must keep carefully in mind, for we must not simply regard what forms an isolated heat-space as though it were just a space of pure uniform heat, having a higher temperature than the environment—no, we must regard it as having differentiated parts, warmer and colder. Just as our liver, lungs and so forth, differ from each other, so do the parts of our heat-organism; and this differentiation is continually changing inwardly. It is a constantly moving differentiation, and that which in the first instance unites with the activity of the soul and spirit has its being in this inner heat-organisation.

Philosophers today say that the effect of the soul and spirit upon the body cannot be perceived, because they imagine an arm as a sort of solid lever appliance; and of course they cannot see how the activity of the soul and spirit, which is conceived of as abstractly as possible, is to be transmitted to this solid lever-appliance. But one need only fix one's attention on the transition, and we find there that which has been organised for man out of the whole Universe. If we really study human thought, we find that the thought which asserts itself in our head has very much to do with this inner work that goes on within the heat-relationships. (This is not quite exactly spoken, but the inaccuracy can perhaps only be corrected in the course of time. We must try to get a complete picture, therefore I will begin with a more cursory description.) If we observe this inter-working of thoughts in the heat-space, in the isolated heat-space, it is evident that something like a co-operation of thought-activity and heat-activity takes place. In what does this consist? Here we come to something which demands very careful consideration.

Taking first the whole of the rest of man, and then his head, we can of course, trace a transmutation of matter (metabolism) from the former to the latter; and the fact that ultimately the head has to do with thought—that we perceive as a direct experience. Yet what really happens? We will lead up to this gradually by way of appropriate imagery. Let us suppose we have some fluid substance; we bring it to boiling point, then it evaporates, and changes into a more rarefied substance. This same process takes place far more intensely with human thought. All that plays its part as transmutation of substances in the human head, brings it about that all substance falls away like a sediment, it is precipitated, and nothing remains of it but the mere picture.

I will now use another example. Suppose you have a vessel containing a solution. This you cool down, which is again a heat-process. A sediment collects below, and above remains finer liquid. This is also the case with the human head; only here no substance whatever is collected above, nothing but pictures, all matter is expelled. This is the activity of the human head; it forms what are mere pictures, and expels the matter.

This process, as a matter of fact, takes place in everything that may be called the transition to pure thinking. All the material substance which has co-operated in the human inner life falls back into the organism, and pictures alone remain. It is a fact that when we rise to pure thought, we live in pictures. Our soul lives in pictures; and these pictures are the remains of all that has gone before. Not the substance, but the pictures remain.

What has just been presented can be followed into the thoughts themselves, for this process only takes place at the moment when thoughts change into mere pictures. At first thoughts live, as it were, embodied. They are permeated by substance; but as pictures they separate themselves out from this substance. If however, we go to work in a truly spiritually scientific way, we can quite easily distinguish pure thought, sense-free thought that has separated itself out from the material process, from all thoughts belonging to what I have called in these lectures the “instinctive wisdom of the ancients.”

This instinctive wisdom of the ancients, as we learn it today, bears in it, quite literally and exactly, the character of not being brought to such filtration of thought that all material substance fell away. Such falling away of all matter is a result of human development. Although not observed by external physiology, it is a fact that virtually—of course virtually and approximately—the thoughts of earthly humanity before the Mystery of Golgotha were always united with matter, and that at the time of the intervention of the Mystery of Golgotha in Earth-life, humanity had arrived at the point in evolution of being able to dissociate itself from matter in the inner process of thought; matter-free thought became possible.

This is not to be regarded as unimportant! It is indeed of the utmost importance that we should observe this development in earthly life—that man in his evolution has become free from the embodiment of thoughts; that they have changed to pure pictures. Thus we may say that up to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, embodied pictures lived in man; but after the Mystery of Golgotha, matter-free pictures lived in man. Before the Mystery of Golgotha, the Universe worked upon man in such a way that he could not attain to pictures free of the body, free of matter. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, the Universe has, as it were, withdrawn. Man has been transposed to an existence which only takes place in pictures.

What man felt before the Mystery of Golgotha as his connection with the Universe, that he related also to the Universe. He related human life on Earth to Heaven. This we can observe quite exactly. The Hebrew of old was clearly and distinctly conscious that the twelve tribes of old Israel were projections on Earth of the constellations of the Zodiac. The twelve-foldness of the Universe comes to expression in the life of man; and we may say that in those days the life of man was pictured as a result of the twelve-foldness of the Heavens, of the Zodiac. Every man felt the starry Heaven streaming into him; and above all a group of men felt themselves as a group into which the starry Heaven rayed. In the evolution of Hebrew antiquity we must go back to the time when we are told of the twelve sons of Jacob as the projection on Earth of the twelve regions of Heaven. Just as there was this in-streaming of the heavenly forces upon Earth-man in gray antiquity, so also, since in the different parts of the Earth's surface evolution came about at different times, in Europe we find a similar thing at a later time. We must go back to the Middle Ages and study the legends of King Arthur and his Round Table, those significant Celtic legends. For Mid-Europe developed later to the stage reached by the old Hebrews thousands of years before. Mid-Europe was only so far on at the time to which the Legends of Arthur and his Round Table are assigned. There was however, a difference. Hebrew antiquity evolved to the point where the in-streaming from the Universe still yielded embodied pictures. Then came the point of time when the body was withdrawn from the pictures, when the pictures had to be given a new substance. There was indeed a danger that, as regards his soul-life, man would pass completely into a picture-existence. This danger man did not at once recognise. Even Descartes was still floundering, and instead of saying: ‘I think, therefore I am not’, he said the opposite of the truth: ‘I think, therefore I am’. For when we live in pictures, we really are not! When we live in mere thoughts, it is the surest sign that we are not. Thoughts must be filled with substance. In order that man might not continue to live in mere pictures, in order that inner substance might once more be in the human being, that Being intervened who entered through the Mystery of Golgotha. Hebrew antiquity was the first to meet with this intervention of the central force, which was now to give back reality to the human soul that had become

picture. This, however, was not at once understood. In the Middle Ages we have the last ramifications in the twelve around King Arthur's Table; but this was soon replaced by something else—the Parsifal Legend, which places One man over against the twelve, One man, who develops the twelve-foldness from out of his own inner centre. Thus, over against that picture which was essentially the Grail picture, must be the Parsifal picture, in which what man now possesses within him, rays out from the centre. The endeavour of those in the Middle Ages who wished to understand the Parsifal picture, who wished to make the Parsifal striving active in the human soul, was to bring into the picture-existence that could crystallise out in man after all the materiality had filtered away—to bring into it true substance, inwardness of being. Whereas the Grail legend shows still the in-streaming from without, the Parsifal figure is now set over against it, raying out from the pictures that which can restore reality to them.

Inasmuch as the Parsifal Legend appeared in this form, it represented the striving of humanity in the Middle Ages to find the way to the Christ within. It represents an instinctive striving to understand that which lives as the Christ in the evolution of humanity. If one studies inwardly what was experienced in the form of this figure of Parsifal, and compares it with what is to be found in the modern creeds, one receives a strong impulse towards that which must happen today. People are now satisfied with the mere husk of the word ‘Christ’ and believe that they thus possess Christ, whereas even the theologians themselves do not possess Him but hold to the outer interpretation of the word. In the Middle Ages there was still so much direct consciousness left, that by comprehending the representative of humanity, Parsifal, men were able to wrest their way upwards to the form of Christ. If we reflect on this we receive the impression of man's place in the whole Universe. Throughout the world of Nature, conversion of forces prevails. In man alone matter is thrown out by pure thought. That matter which is actually cast out of the human being by pure thought is also annihilated, it passes into nothingness.

If we reflect upon this, we must think of all Earth-existence as follows: Here is the Earth, and on the Earth, man; into man passes matter. Everywhere else it is transmuted. In man it is annihilated. The material Earth will pass away in proportion as matter is destroyed by man. When, some day, all the substance of the Earth will have passed through the human organism, being used there for thinking, the Earth will cease to be a cosmic body. And what man will have gained from this cosmic Earth will be pictures. These however, will have a new reality, they will have preserved an original reality. This reality is that which proceeds from the force which, as central force, makes itself felt through the Mystery of Golgotha. Thus, when we look to the end of the Earth, what do we see? The end of the Earth will come when all its substance is destroyed as described above. Man will then possess pictures of all that has taken place in earthly evolution. At the end of the earthly period the Earth will have sunk into the Universe, and there would remain merely pictures, without reality. What gives them reality however, is the fact of the Mystery of Golgotha having been there in humanity; that gives these pictures inner reality for the life to come. Through the Mystery of Golgotha, a new beginning is set for the future existence of the Earth.

From this we can see that what is contained in our stream of evolution is not to be regarded merely as a continuous stream, where one thing is always related to another as effect to cause, but we must so consider the Earth-evolution that we recognise in the first place a pre-Christian evolution, out of which came all that men were able to think at that time, for what they were able then to think was contained in the Father-God, was imparted to the Earth through Him. The nature and work of the Father-God however, was such that what He created as Earth-evolution was given over to that part of Earth-evolution that tends to pass away. A new beginning was made with the Mystery of Golgotha. Of all that went before only pictures were to remain, as it were descriptive paintings of the world. These pictures were, however, to receive new reality through that which entered as Being into the evolution of the Earth through the Mystery of Golgotha. That is the cosmic significance of the Mystery of Golgotha; that is what I meant years ago, when I said: Christianity will not be understood until it has penetrated even into the physics of our Earth, until we understand how, even in physical things, the Christian substance works in the world-existence. We have not grasped Christianity until we can say to ourselves: Precisely in the domain of heat such a change is taking place in man that through it matter is being destroyed and a purely picture-existence comes forth out of the matter; but through the union of the human soul with the Christ-substance this picture-existence is made into a new reality.

If we compare this thought, showing us the interweaving of what man has transformed into soul and spirit with physical existence, if we compare this whole thought with the cheerless scientific thoughts of modern times which can lead only to a blind alley, we shall see its great and deep significance, and we shall see how we are to regard thoughts like those of Julius Robert Mayer, which are in reality that which falls away from cosmic existence, even as ice and snow melt before the Sun. Man however, retains these pictures, and they derive a reality for the future because a new substance has laid hold of them, the substance which has passed through the Mystery of Golgotha.

And through this, the thought of freedom is established for man and is united with scientific thinking. This comes about because man says: Not ‘conservation of matter and of energy’; but, ‘matter and energy have a temporal life allotted to them.’ We take part not in the developing material Universe, but in its decay, and we have now to raise ourselves out of it to mere picture-existence and permeate ourselves with That to which we can only devote ourselves with our free-will, to the Christ-Being. For He so stands in human evolution that man's connection with Him can only be a free one. Anyone who seeks to be constrained to recognise Christ cannot find His Kingdom, he can rise only to the Universal Father-God, who however, in our world, has now only a share in a decaying world, and precisely on account of the decay of His own world, has sent the Son. Spiritual cosmogony must unite with natural cosmogony, but they must unite in man—and that by a free act. Hence we can only say of one who wishes to prove freedom that he is still at an ancient heathen standpoint. All proofs of freedom fail; our task is not to prove freedom, but to take hold of it. It is grasped when one understands the nature of sense-free thinking. Sense-free thinking however needs again the connection with the world, and this connection it does not find unless it unites with what has been introduced into the evolution of the world as new substance through the Mystery of Golgotha.

Thus the bridge between natural and moral cosmogony lies in a right understanding of Christianity. It might at first appear very strange that just those who uphold the modern creeds—as well as ancient creeds that extend their influence into modern life—do not desire a science leading towards Christianity, but desire a science as materialistic as possible, so that an unscientific faith may hold its own alongside of it.

In this connection we might say: Modern materialism and reactionary Christianity are very closely related, for the latter has driven mankind into the conception that things spiritual must not be penetrated by true knowledge. Knowledge must be kept free from the Spiritual, must be kept away from it, must extend only to the material. Thus on the one hand stands the advocate of one or other creed, who says: Science extends only to what is sense-perceptible; all else must be grasped by faith alone. On the other side stands the materialist, who says: science extends only to what is sense-perceptible; and faith I have given up.

Spiritual Science is not related to materialism. Modern creeds are indeed very closely related to it; that is to say, old creeds as introduced into modern life are indeed closely related to materialism.

I think I have now shown how the possibility of permeating the moral law with what we can know of nature, and conversely, of permeating nature-knowledge with moral law—is bound up with Spiritual Science. For the phantom which figures today in external science as Man, that delusive picture which shows Man as a configuration of mineral substance, simply does not exist. Man is just as much organised into the Fluid element as into the Solid; he is organised also into the element of Air, and above all, into that of Heat. When we come as far as Heat, we find the transition to the soul-and-spirit nature, for in Heat we have already the transition from Space to Time; and that which is of the soul flows in the temporal. Beyond Heat we pass more and more out of Space into Time, and it becomes possible, by the roundabout way here indicated, to seek the moral in the physical. Indeed it might be said that one who thinks short-sightedly will scarcely arrive at the connection of the moral with the physical in human nature—for one might certainly go to meet death as a miscreant without dislocating a limb, but remaining a well-formed man. The heat condition in the man is however not examined. The heat condition is changed far more subtly and delicately than is supposed, and works back upon what man carries through death. Today the method of study is such that we look up into abstraction, we have our thoughts up there; and we look down into the physical-material. We do not make the transition unless we pass over to the inwardly stirring heat lying between these, which has, at least for human instinct, still a physical as well as a soul aspect. We can develop warmth for our fellows morally—soul-warmth, which is the counterpart of physical warmth. This soul-warmth however, does not arise through a physical change in the sense of Julius Robert Mayer's theory; it arises—but how does it arise? I might say that here it gives palpable evidence of itself. Why do we speak of ‘warm’ feelings? Because we feel, we experience that the feeling we call ‘warm’ gives the picture of outer, physical warmth. The warmth percolates into the picture. What today is only soul-warmth will in a future cosmic existence play a physical part, for the Christ-Impulse will live therein. What today is simply picture-warmth in our world of Feeling—will live on, that it may become physical when the Earth-warmth has disappeared, for it is what the Christ-Substance, the Christ-Nature is. Let us try to find that delicate connection between external physical warmth and that which we instinctively call warmth of feeling; let us try to find it. Let us go to what Goethe said in his book called ‘The Material-Moral effects of Colours’, let us see how in his colour-perception he places the cooling colours on one side, and the warming colours on the other; how he unites the material-moral with the physical conditions which can to a certain extent be measured with a thermoscope, and shows how the element of soul interplays with the external and physical. Then we arrive at one aspect of how a moral cosmogony can be found in the study of Goethe.

The Jesuits of course hate this alliance. Therefore the best book on Goethe written out of the Jesuit thought is a poisonous book, a terrible book, though much more ingenious and effective than anything written about him elsewhere, because written with inner Jesuitical rhetoric. I refer to the three-volumed work on Goethe by Father Baumgartner. It is full of spite and malice, but it is both powerful and effective. We may be very sure that in that world, of which many people have no conception, a world which opposes us too, Goethe is better known than he is among more cultured circles. Those who appreciate Goethe and understand him from the positive standpoint, form but a small community. There is a large community of those who hate him; we do not conceive it half large enough. Some time ago I pointed out how little people are awake to what lives among us—I once said I would have liked counts to be taken at the door of all those who knew the German work, Weber's Thirteen Limetrees, a work that was truly Roman Catholic in the most positive sense. I should like to know how many it would be! The result would have been deplorable. Yet soon after publication this work ran through hundreds of editions. Have those who bring humanity forward any idea in their waking consciousness of how widespread these things are? That they have a widespread effect is certain; so too have those things from which the conflict with us proceeds. Whereas we have a small community which holds to Goethe, but is yet never able to point to anything of importance from Goethe's wisdom, the Jesuit book on Goethe is written with great cleverness and acumen—and that is precisely what we need, that we may be filled with spirit that is awake. Spiritual Science will surely succeed if a wakeful spiritual life really takes root in us.

From what has been said about the relation of sleeping to waking in man, and also about the membering of his organism, it can be seen that in sleep he experiences a profound cleavage in his earthly existence. We know that a distinction has to be made between the part of man which is materially perceptible to the senses, his physical body, and the part that can be seen only through Imagination, his etheric or formative forces body. This formative forces body embraces also the living forces which enable a man to grow, underlie his nutritive processes and generally build him up. As we have seen, the formative forces body includes also the whole system of a man's thoughts. Intermingled with his formative forces body and his physical body are two higher members, which we may call the astral body and the Ego-organisation.

In a man's life during the day these four members of his being are in active inner relationship with one another. But when he passes into the sleeping state, his physical and etheric bodies separate from the Ego and astral body. They remain—if one may put it thus—in bed, while the astral and Ego organisations enter a purely spiritual world. So that, from his falling asleep until he wakes, a man's being is split in two—on the one hand there are his physical organisation and the etheric that holds his world of thought; on the other, the Ego and the astral organisation.

I believe someone in the course of these days has voiced the misgiving: If in sleep a man's whole thought-world remains in the etheric organisation, then he must be unable to carry effectively into the sleeping state the thoughts which he can grasp only while he is awake. This shows a certain anxiety lest wishes for one's fellow-men, for example, or thoughts relating to an absent one, should lose all power because they cannot be taken over into the life of sleep. I should like to reply with a picture.

You are not very likely to have heard of anyone who, wanting to shoot at a target, thought he had to throw his gun at it. While still holding the gun he lets the charge do the work, and you cannot say that nothing reaches the target because the gun remains in the man's hands. It is just the same in the case we are considering. The effects of our thinking life when we are awake do not cease during sleep because the thoughts remain in the physical and etheric bodies. It is particularly important with these subtle matters that we should be precise in our thinking—precise to a degree unnecessary in the physical world, where the things themselves provide immediate corrections. From what has been said in these last few days, however, you will see that a much more intimate relation exists between the physical body and the etheric body than between the etheric body and the astral organisation. For throughout the whole of an earthly life the physical body and the etheric remain together, never separating even when, in sleep, the etheric body and the astral body have to part company.

There is a close connection, on the other hand, between the Ego and the astral organisation, for neither do they ever part from one another during life on Earth. But the connection between the astral and the etheric bodies is looser, and it is there that the split can occur. This has a quite definite effect on a man's earthly life, and also on his life beyond the Earth. In our waking state we give life to our senses through our Ego, and through the astral body to our nervous system; and what is brought about in this way we send down into the etheric and physical bodies, as we must do if we are to live in the physical world. Hence, because everything has to be imprinted into the physical body, in order to become manifest in life from birth or conception until death, a materialist supposes that the physical body can make up the whole of a man's being.

This work of incorporating the experiences of earthly existence into the etheric body and the physical body does not proceed, however, without meeting obstacles and hindrances. We are never able to send down straight away into the organs of these bodies our experiences and the thoughts embodied in our nervous system, for anything we absorb from the external physical world is at first in a form moulded by that world. If, for example, we perceive something angular, an experience of this angular quality forms itself in our Ego and our astral body. This cannot be taken up immediately into the etheric body, for the etheric body struggles against absorbing anything experienced in the external world of the senses. Imaginative knowledge alone is able to throw light on this situation. No ordinary sense-observation, no material experiment, no intellectual reflection, will help us to a view of this necessary re-forming, re-shaping, of what we perceive with the senses, so as to fit it for living in the etheric body and physical body in such a way that we can separate from it in sleep. It is only when we are able to observe the actual relation between waking and sleeping in earthly man that we come to realise the continuous conflict that goes on in life. Thus—in the case of the crude example already mentioned—if I have to take my experience of an angular object into my etheric and physical bodies, I must first round off its angles and give the object a form suited to those bodies. It has to be completely transformed.

This transforming of anything having as volatile a life as that of the Ego and astral body themselves, and giving it a plastic form capable of living in the etheric body and of continuing its existence as plastic movement in the physical body—this transformation creates an inner struggle not perceived by ordinary consciousness to-day, but anyone who has Imaginative knowledge can perceive it. Generally it lasts two or three days. We have to sleep on an experience for two or often three nights for it to unite with the other experiences already imprinted in the etheric and physical bodies. The dream-world is an actual expression, but only an outward expression, of this struggle. While a man is dreaming, his Ego and his astral body flow into his etheric and physical bodies and come to a sudden stop—as already explained. This check is an expression of the struggle I am now picturing; it goes on for two or three days. Until the experience has been slept upon more than once, it has not gone sufficiently far down into the etheric body, so that where the connection is loose, as it is between astral body and etheric body, a continuous interweaving is to be seen.

If we have here the etheric body and the astral is there asleep, then on the verge of waking or of going to sleep a continuous struggle takes place, a movement full of life, expressed outwardly in the dream, but signifying inwardly this weaving of experiences into the etheric and physical bodies. It is only when a man has slept on some experience two or three times—perhaps more often—that the experience is united with the memories already bound up with his etheric and physical bodies. The point is that the experience has to be transformed into memory, which is left lying in bed during sleep, for a memory is essentially the expression in thought of the physical and etheric bodies.

For Imaginative cognition, perceiving this is an extraordinarily interesting experience. The very form of its expression is significant. We give our ordinary earthly experiences definite outlines in conformity with natural laws. These laws, however, no longer hold good when the experiences merge with the etheric; everything firmly outlined becomes soft and plastic. Whatever was at rest begins to move; anything angular becomes rounded. Intellectual experience passes over into the experience of the artist.

That is the deeper reason why, in those ancient days when people still had instinctive vision, art was rooted in life in a quite different way from anything we have to-day. Even as late as the Renaissance, in the searching back to earlier art there was still in Raphael and other painters at least a tradition of that conversion of the intellectual into the artistic. For the intellectual loses its form, and takes on the nature of art, directly we rise to the super-sensible. The fact that in art to-day people are so strongly inclined to naturalism, wanting models for all their work, shows that they no longer realise its true nature. Humanity must find its way again into the true realm of art.

Human life as I have described it is thus made up in such a way that it is always possible to say: I am experiencing something which will take three days to flow into the etheric body. A day later, the experience of the previous day will flow in. Hence it takes a man two, three, or even four days to complete this uniting of an experience with the etheric body.

Now when a man passes through the gate of death, the etheric body detaches itself from the physical body—something that never happens during earthly life. And now, when the etheric body is free of the physical, all that has been interwoven into the etheric body is gradually dispersed, and this process lasts for about as long—two, three or four days—as the interweaving did. Imagination, which can judge rightly of these matters, shows how during life the physical body holds together, through its resistance, the experiences that have gradually penetrated into the etheric body. When the physical body is laid aside at death, it can be seen how in the first few days afterwards the memories woven into the etheric body pass out into the universal cosmic ether, and dissolve. And so, for two, three or four days after death, a person experiences this dissolving of his accumulated store of memories. This may be called the laying aside of the etheric body, but it involves an ever-increasing enhancement of the memories; they lose the third dimension and become two-dimensional, entirely picture-like. After the gate of death is passed, the person is faced with the whole tableau of his life, taking its course in vivid pictures for two, three or four days, the time varying with each individual.

But just as a student of botany recognises in a seed the plant that will develop from it, so anyone with Imaginative cognition does not see only at death this passing over of the etheric, of the whole memory system, to the cosmos; he has seen it already in picture form, for as a picture it is always present in human beings. Those who can grasp rightly the interweaving that goes on in the course of three days or more see already, in this incorporation of experiences in the etheric body, a picture of the inward experience that is lived through for three or four days after death. Whereas in earthly existence, before acquiring Imaginative cognition, a man experiences more or less unconsciously this blending of his experiences into the memories held together by the physical body, immediately after death he experiences the reverse process, the unwinding, as it were, of his memories and the passing away of them into the Cosmos. Our treasured thoughts, left behind whenever we fall asleep, unite directly after death with the whole Cosmos. This is what in dying we have to yield up to cosmic existence.

These things must not be grasped only intellectually, but also with heart and soul. For in face of them a man feels that his life is not to be taken egoistically, but that he is placed in the world as a thinking being. He will feel that his thoughts are not something he can preserve, for after his death they will flow out into the Cosmos and will go on working there as active forces. If we have had good thoughts, we surrender them to the Cosmos, and if we have had bad thoughts, we surrender them also. For a man does not exist on earth merely to develop himself as a free being. This he certainly should do, and he can do it precisely if he takes something else into consideration. He is here also as a being on whom the Gods themselves may work, in order to lead the Cosmos on from epoch to epoch. Moreover I would say this: What the Gods are to weave into the Cosmos as thoughts has to be prepared by them through all that can be thought and produced during individual human lives. Here is the nurturing-place where the Gods have to tend the thoughts they need for the continuing evolution of the world—thoughts they then incorporate into the Cosmos as active impulses.

During sleep, a man lives with his Ego and astral organisation outside his physical and etheric bodies. While in this state as a being of soul and spirit, as Ego and astral organisation, he is interwoven with the spiritual forces pervading the whole Cosmos. He is in the world that is, figuratively speaking, outside his skin—the world of which the only impressions he receives in waking life come through his senses. During sleep, therefore, he enters right into the things that in waking life show him only their outer side. But it is only what is experienced by the astral organisation, when outside the physical and etheric bodies, that can be brought back into the thoughts of the etheric body, not what is experienced out there by the Ego. Hence, during the whole of our existence on Earth, the experiences of the Ego in sleep remain subconscious for ordinary consciousness, and even for Imaginative consciousness. They are revealed only to Inspired consciousness, as already described.

So this may be said: In sleep a man gathers up sufficient strength to imprint on the etheric body those experiences that can be put into thoughts. But during his life on Earth he lacks the power to deal with the wishes and desires which during sleep are experienced by the Ego in connection with earthly affairs—for these also are gone over during sleep. In our epoch, therefore, only the part of sleep-life that can be transformed into thoughts, imprinted in thoughts, passes over into the conscious waking life of earthly men; while the sleep-experiences of the Ego lie hidden behind the veil of existence.

Imaginative and Inspired consciousness bring to light here things which can be perfectly well understood by any impartial person with a healthy mind, but in our present civilisation they encounter tremendous prejudice. Even the fact that when the three-dimensional in the physical world is imprinted in the etheric body, it changes from the plastic to a picture form, from three to two dimensions—even to grasp this calls for an unprejudiced approach. Directly we rise to Imagination, we no longer have to do with three dimensions, any more than with four, as a misguided science believes, but with two only. The difficulty of picturing what is then experienced comes from our being accustomed in earthly experience to reckon with three dimensions and to form our concepts accordingly. And so, when we should be finding our way over to two dimensions, we say: “Yes, but two dimensions are included in the three; the two dimensions of a plane can lie in such a way that there might still be a third.”

That, however, is not the point. As soon as we enter the Imaginative world, the third dimension no longer concerns us at all, and the position of a plane is immaterial. On our entering the etheric world of Imagination, the third dimension ceases to have any meaning. Hence—and I add this for mathematicians—all equations for the ether must be transformed so as to correspond with the two-dimensional world.

Now if we would pass on to the world accessible to Inspiration, in which we are as Ego between going to sleep and waking, we come to one dimension only; we then have to do with a one-dimensional world. This transition to a one-dimensional world, taken for granted by the faculty of Inspiration—the faculty, that is, of actually perceiving the spiritual in which we live between going to sleep and waking—this understanding of a world with only one dimension has always been part of Initiation-knowledge.

I have already described how the hidden forces of the Sun—not the forces of the external physical sunlight—are revealed to men of the Jacob Boehme type. These hidden Sun-forces do not spread out three-dimensionally, but are perceived in one dimension only. An older, more instinctive Initiation-knowledge could, and did, come to perceive this through Inspiration, but without a clearly conscious knowledge of what it was. Much that is still handed down in the ancient records of long past epochs of mankind is to be understood only when one knows: This refers to the spiritual world that is one-dimensional, the world we find through Inspiration; as regards our earthly life it refers to the hidden forces of the Sun and Stars. Between going to sleep and waking we do not live in Sun-forces that are outwardly displayed, but in those that are hidden.

These hidden forces of the Sun can, for example, pass through certain kinds of stone which are impenetrable to physically perceptible Sun-forces, and by passing through them become one-dimensional. If anyone has acquired Inspirational vision, then, although he may not perceive the physical light, he can see the hidden Sun-forces penetrating the otherwise opaque stone; thus the stone is permeable for the Sun's hidden forces and also for the forces of Inspiration.

In very ancient periods of human evolution on Earth, such expedients were not needed. But when the old instinctive clairvoyance, which in those days was the basis of Initiation-knowledge, was on the wane, these aids were adopted as a short cut—we might say—to the perception of things no longer perceptible through instinctive Inspiration. People had recourse to such measures in the following way, for example. Imagine a number of stones set up beside one another, with other stones laid across the tops of them. If this is so arranged that on certain occasions the penetrating rays of the Sun fall on the covering stone, then the physical rays of the Sun will be held up by the stone and the hidden rays will pass through.

When anyone trained to it places himself so that he can look into this structure from the side, he will see the spiritual, one-dimensional rays of the Sun shining through and vanishing into the earth. If, when all this was no longer perceived through instinctive clairvoyant powers, a short cut of that kind were taken, it enabled anyone looking from the side into the shadow-zone to perceive the world of spiritual Sun-rays which we experience every night during sleep. Hence in such contrivances, to be met with in this very district, we can see by what means, during a long transitional period, certain wise leaders of mankind tried to penetrate to the hidden forces of the Sun, which a man such as Jacob Boehme could do instinctively through simply beholding earthly things.

Although such collections of stones can be seen to-day in appropriate places, their real significance can be brought out only through what Spiritual Science reveals. Otherwise people are left with a superficial explanation which misses the real point.

Such stones can of course be distributed in the circle so as to show how the spiritual rays of the Sun differ according to particular constellations of the stars.

I have been trying to make clear to you the world in which our Ego lives during sleep. This world is not held together by the inherent forces of the physical and etheric bodies. These bodies, however, are alone responsible for the clear consciousness of earthly man; they are the source of the judgments we form, in accordance with our feelings and our will, on our own actions, our inward experiences and thoughts. Hence, when we are awake, we judge our external life according to the thoughts we have been able to imprint in our physical and etheric bodies. But it is not only a human being himself who has something to say about his experiences; his experiences and actions are the concern of the whole spiritual Cosmos. The Cosmos judges whether an action, a thought or feeling is to be declared good or bad. Between waking and sleeping we are left to form our own opinions about ourselves. As I have sufficiently shown during these lectures, the spiritual content of the Cosmos takes the moral as its natural law, and what the Cosmos has to say about our true nature and our actions is experienced by the Ego during sleep. Inspired cognition shows how the Ego, even during the shortest sleep, experiences over again everything the individual has gone through from his last moment of waking until his present sleep—however long or short this period may be. So a man, in the successive states of waking, sleeping, waking, sleeping, experiences again in sleep whatever he went through during his last waking time, especially where his own activities were concerned.

As far as this is the experience of the Ego, it remains outside ordinary consciousness, but Inspiration can call it up. Then the particular nature of the experience is disclosed, and we find it is gone through in reverse order to our experience by day. Whereas by day you go through your experiences—leaving short sleeps aside—from morning to evening, during the night, in sleep, you live through these experiences backwards—from evening to morning. This is in order that we may experience whatever the spiritual Cosmos has to say about the way we have lived through the day.

During earthly life, however, a man cannot normally call this experience up into consciousness. Yet he must become conscious of it, or his human existence would fall out of connection with cosmic existence. Inspired cognition shows that as soon as a man after death has watched his life-tableau, which, as I have said, lasts two, three, or four days, and as soon as his memories have dissolved into the Cosmos, spreading themselves out there—after this experience, often referred to as the freeing of the etheric body—a time comes when the man is able to look back on his earthly life again, but in a different way.

If we look at those few days after death, we come to a mighty panorama of our life, but at first it embraces daytime experiences alone. In reality, however, a man goes through not only his waking experiences but also those he has had during sleep. When in earthly life you look back on your ordinary memories, you always leave out your periods of sleep, as if your only experiences had been those lived through by day. And so it goes on right back to the time after birth when your memories cease.

In fact it is like this with the panorama that appears during those two or three days after death. Then, later, comes a period when soul and spirit have gained sufficient strength to experience in the spiritual world all that could manifest only unconsciously, in picture form, while we were asleep at night during our life on Earth. It now comes before us as experience. A man then passes through a period—lasting about one-third of his life on Earth, approximately the time normally spent in sleep—when he experiences his nights again, but in a backward direction. So he lives through his last night first, then the night before, and so on right back to the time of his birth and conception.

From other points of view I have described this going back through a quite different world after death in my book, Theosophy, when I was speaking of man, as a being of soul and spirit, passing through the soul-world.

Now when after death a man has gone thus through the soul-world, taking about seven years for it if he has lived twenty-one years, or, if he has lived to sixty, perhaps twenty years—always the length of time he has slept in earthly life—he has then to experience the total effect he has had upon Earth-existence—an existence created by the Gods in order to carry the world, with the help of the human race, a little further on its progress. Up to the end of this backward survey of his nights after death, a man has been gaining knowledge of what he has himself become, of his significance for the Cosmos. He now has to experience how the Earth itself has been affected by his life. This takes a long time—half the time, indeed, between earthly death and a new earthly life. Tomorrow we shall have to speak of this in greater detail.

After going backwards through our nights, we come to our birth; and having arrived there, after this backward journey through the soul-world, we have to find the way back to our previous earthly life. This enables a man to bring over with him that previous life for the shaping of his next life on Earth.

Here we enter the realm of the old Initiation-knowledge (which must be renewed to-day in a way suited to men's present faculties.) The old Initiation-knowledge led people over to religious experience. For Initiation-knowledge is always true knowledge, but of a kind that leads out from the world of the senses into the spiritual, so that the human will is stirred to take a religious form. At the stage of Initiation which leads to the Intuitive-knowledge already described, it has always been recognised as of the utmost importance that when a man goes back to his previous life on Earth, he should meet on the way a being who can become his guide after death.

In a certain region of the Earth a man would say to himself: In my earthly life I must absorb the teaching of the last Bodhisattva to appear on earth. The man may have lived three hundred years after the appearance of this Bodhisattva. But when after death he went back to his previous life on Earth, he arrived at the time when the last Bodhisattva was living on Earth. In the old Initiation-knowledge, this meeting with the last Bodhisattva to appear on the Earth was regarded as enabling the man to make a real contact with his own previous earthly life—which means finding the necessary strength for eternal life, for this can be found only when real contact with the previous earthly life is achieved.

Any possibility of this meeting with the Bodhisattvas, who descend to Earth from certain spiritual regions, ceased at a definite time in human evolution, in world-evolution. And to-day a man would have been unable, when after death he had gone back to his last birth and conception, to go further and make contact with his previous earthly lives. The way to this could be found by a man during the first millennia of earthly evolution before the Mystery of Golgotha, when, in going back, he came to the time of the last Bodhisattva. Today, however, he will find the way only if he makes the journey under the leadership of that Being who united Himself with the Earth through the Mystery of Golgotha; if, in other words, he enters into such a relation with the Mystery of Golgotha that Christ can become his guide. For the Christ gathers into Himself all those powers of leadership for life between death and rebirth which used to belong to the Bodhisattvas who appeared on Earth.

Thus the event of the Mystery of Golgotha, with its particular bearing on our experience between death and rebirth, is one of the most important facts in the whole evolution of the Earth. If anyone wishes to learn about the spiritual evolution of the Earth and the place it takes in the spiritual evolution of the Cosmos, and if moreover he wishes to understand what a man goes through in connection with this spiritual evolution of Earth and Cosmos during his life between death and a new birth, then he must give the Mystery of Golgotha its right place in the whole evolution of the world. For people to-day, therefore, a way must be found that will lead attention over from the evolution of man to the evolution of the world, so that the Mystery of Golgotha is seen in all its fundamental significance for the course of events in the evolution of the Earth and in the evolution of man within the earthly.

With these matters, as far as modern Initiation-knowledge can reveal them—matters relating to the later experiences of human beings after death, when they have gone back in memory through their night-experiences—we will deal further tomorrow, in connection with the evolution of the world.

From what I gave out in my lecture yesterday it may perhaps be comprehensible to you that I should say of Aristotle, who really gathered together the whole knowledge, the sum total of the cognition of the ancients in the fourth pre-Christian century, that in spite of the fact that he only sent out a kind of system of logic into central Europe, yet he himself stood firmly based on the Greek Mysteries, and indeed on all the Mysteries of that time. Indeed we must even say that anyone who can follow such things as world-views and philosophies not merely with the intellect and the understanding, but is able to absorb them into his feeling, will be able to sense, even in the logical presentations of Aristotle, that a certain inner connection with the secrets of nature underlies the Aristotelian logic and philosophy. It was the fate of Aristotle then, if I might express it in this way, his own personal path of evolution to have to pour out this logical system into Europe. It may even be said, by way of illustrating the peculiar fact underlying these remarks, that it would be inconceivable to think of Plato as the teacher of Alexander, whereas, as we know, Aristotle was able to fulfil that task and to become the teacher of Alexander.

Plato only carried on in his own way the ancient Mysteries, though in a more ideal form. But just through the ideas that filled him he became that personality whose teaching led men away from the secrets of nature, whereas Aristotle continually drew them back to these; and this you can gather from the short representations I give in my book, The Riddles of Philosophy. We only learn to know the fun case when we can form an idea of the content of that seven years' instruction which Aristotle gave to his pupil Alexander the Great. I will try and compress into a short space the content of this instruction, drawn as it was from those ancient Mysteries.

Now when a man spoke in those ancient times in an authentic way about nature, people did not understand by the word “nature” that which our modern natural scientists understand; i.e., the merely earthly phenomena from which all the extra-earthly phenomena, the entire phenomena of the heavens, are excluded; but at that time they incorporated the human being himself into the world of nature in the very widest sense of the words. This could be done, because, at that time men sought the spirit in nature; it would not have occurred to them in those ancient times to regard man as being devoid of soul and spirit.

This Mystery-instruction taught men to regard nature in such a way as expanded far out into the Cosmos, in so far as the Cosmos was accessible to man through his relationship and affinity with it. All instructions, all teaching which was taken seriously in those ancient times was not an appeal to the human intellect or to the outer powers of observation of man. What we today regard as knowledge played no important role in those days, even in the time of Aristotle. If the historians of the different sciences today wish to write a history of their own scientific thinking they should really begin with Copernicus or Galileo, because when they go back beyond this in time what they have to say is not really adequate; and if they then approach Greek knowledge, what they have to give is purest phantasy. What they do is simply, in a sense, to prolong the present back into the earliest times; but it is no reality that they describe. Even at the time of Aristotle, even by Aristotle himself, such teachings as were taken earnestly were so given that they were connected with a complete transformation of human nature; with an appeal, not only to human thought and observation, but to the whole of human life. Man was to become a different being through knowledge, a being quite different from what he was without it. The essential point in these Mysteries was that man, through the knowledge he acquired therein, was to become a quite different being from what he was before. Actually, in the time of Aristotle the attempt was made to bring about this transformation of man's nature by causing to work upon his soul two polarically opposite feelings. The pupil who sought instruction and who was gradually to acquire this knowledge was exhorted to feel himself intensely as man in his relation to nature around him. The pupil was told: “See how thou breathest the air which in summer is warm and in winter is cold. Thou breathest the air in such a way that in winter thou canst perceive thine own breath in the form of vapour or mist; but in summer when thou breathest the warm air, it is invisible.”

Such a phenomenon was made the starting-point for instruction. The connection with nature was not made by saying: “Here is a body with this or that temperature. I heat it in a retort and then it undergoes transformation.” No, the starting-point was man himself, and he was made to realize his connection with the process of breathing. Gradually he was led, on the one hand, to realize and feel the warm air. He was told: “Picture to thyself what warm air is. Warm air seeks to rise, to ascend, and thou must feel, when this warm air approaches thee, that something really wants to bear thee out into the wide spaces of the Cosmos. Then, in contrast with this realize cold water in any form. Simply feel it; thou dost not feel at home in this. In the warm air thou canst feel at home in such a way, that this warm air seeks to bear thee up into the wide spaces of the Cosmos; but in the cold water thou feelest strange, not at all at home in it. Thou feelest, when thou withdrawest from cold water, leaving it to have its way outside, that is something which concerns it alone; it then transforms itself into the snow-crystals for example, the snow-flakes which fall on the earth, and thou feelest thyself to be in thy proper place observing them from without. Thou canst really only feel the warm air within thee and wouldst like to be carried upwards by this warm air into the wide spaces of the cosmos; but the cold water thou canst feel only outside thyself, and in order to have relationship with it thou wouldst like simply to observe it in its results, by means of thy senses.”

These were the two polar opposites with which the pupil was confronted. He was taught to feel that the words “outside” and “inside” are simply empty expressions, which really have no meaning; but such phrases as “warm airiness,” “cold wateriness” mean a great deal. These are contrasts through which man can feel himself fitted in to the world with the innermost part of his being. The word “outside” then signifies that which is cold and damp, “inside” that which is of the nature of warm air. Man felt this contrast qualitatively, and felt his relation to the world qualitatively. He spoke no longer of things, but of man himself, and it was said that the warm air leads one to the Gods, to the Divine Beings in the heights, and that the damp and cold leads down to the subterranean demons.

But this journey towards the subterranean demons is at the same time connected with a knowledge of nature; only the disciple had to take with him into these lower regions that which he had discovered and experienced through the warm air in the heights, so that what is below might not injure him.

When, with this inner feeling for the contrast between the warm air and the damp cold, when, armed with this feeling he approaches nature, he could, through the deeper experience of its objects and processes gain a deep insight into the being of the Cosmos. Today the chemist investigates hydrogen and ascribes to that element certain properties which he has discovered. Then he observes cosmic space and sees there something which reveals the same characteristics as hydrogen in the laboratory, so he concludes that hydrogen exists even in the cosmic spaces.

Such an argument would at the time of Aristotle have seemed foolishness, for then one approached things in a different way.

When the inner experience of the pupil had been deepened through that which has just been described he was led to the observation of that which really lives in the plants, as they unfold their blossoms outwardly and strive upwards towards the cosmos. Plant knowledge was that to which the pupil was led next. “Look into the opening corona of the plant, and observe how it radiates towards the wide spaces of the cosmos; realize the impression that this makes upon thee.”

When the pupil with these deepened feelings of which I have just spoken looked at the opening blossoms, there arose in him an inner knowledge, an inner illumination; flowers became to him the announcers of cosmic secrets in the wide spaces of the earth. Flowers spoke to him of the wide cosmic spaces and then, in a penetrating way, though only by means of indications the pupil was led by the teacher to discover within himself the secrets which streamed from the wide spaces of the cosmos into the being of the plant. Thus the pupil was gradually led to answer this question of the master: “What dost thou really perceive when thou gazest into the opening calyx of the flower, into the self-opening blossom, in which the stamens appear and radiate towards thee? What dost thou really perceive there?” And the pupil answered: “These plants tell me that they are compelled by the heavy cold earth to take up their abode upon it, but that, in reality they have not originated in the firm hard earth, they have only been imprisoned in it. In truth, they are beings born of water, and have their real true existence, as beings of water, in a previous condition of the earth.” (I am referring to that condition of the earth described in my Outline of Occult Science as the Old Moon-period.)

The pupil was led to say: “It is really the secrets of the moon which left the earth, and which still preserves something of the pre-earthly Moon condition, which are reflected to me out of the flowers.” For the plants did not say the same thing to the pupil every night. When the moon was in the constellation of Leo flowers said something quite different to what they did when the moon was in that of Virgo or Scorpio. That which the moon experienced as she went through her orbit round the Zodiac, these experiences were related by the flowers on the earth. The flowers on the earth told the secrets of the cosmos outside. In truth, through all this that was revealed to him the pupil said out of the innermost of his heart:

I look into the flowers;
They reveal their relationship with the moon-existence
They are subdued by the earth; for they are water-born.

The pupil could feel this because he had previously experienced the effect of chilling water. He had experienced this chilling, and through this experience he had acquired his knowledge of the plants.

When the pupil had been made sufficiently acquainted with the secrets of the moon, revealed to him by the plants growing out of the earth, he was led on further to the metals of the earth, to the principal metals, Lead, Tin, Iron, Gold, Copper, Quicksilver, Silver, as I explained to you in the last lecture in a different connection. When he had developed such an intensified life of feeling as I have indicated, he then made himself acquainted with the metals, and experienced what they so mysteriously relate; and through the metals he experienced the secrets of the entire planetary system. For lead told him about Saturn, tin about Jupiter, iron about Mars, gold about the Sun, copper about Venus, quicksilver about Mercury, and again silver about the Moon, in so far as she does not stand in close relationship with the earth, but belongs to the whole cosmos. Just as the blossoms revealed their secret to the pupil, so now he learned the metallic secret. First he learnt the secret of the plants, secondly that of the metals.

This secret of the metals which was given in the Eleusinian Mysteries, through that mighty planetary globe which, as I described in the last lecture surrounded the male statue, this secret of the metals still formed part of the instruction given, even at the time of Aristotle; and in this secret of the metals there was revealed the secret of the planets. Man's feelings were not then so coarse as they are today. When he approached the metal lead it did not merely appear in its lead-grey colour to the eye, but the lead-grey made a peculiar impression upon the inner eye. In a certain sense the leaden-grey colour of the fresh metal lead extinguished the other colours, and he felt that he participated in this lead-grey metallity. He came into another condition of consciousness and experienced something different from the present. He was filled with a feeling, a mood, as if the whole pre-earthly period of the earth rose before him. It was as if the present were toned down through the lead-grayness. Saturn nature revealed itself.

As regards gold, we know that according to external analogies the ancients saw in gold a representative of the sun. That was in truth not merely an external play of analogy that the sun was regarded as something precious in the heavens and gold as something valuable on earth. Really, nothing is too stupid for the man of today when he wishes to regard the ancients as stupid. When man regarded the metal gold, with its self-contained shining yellow colour, its modest mien and yet proud standing in the world, he actually felt how this is related to the entire blood-circulation of man. He felt in the quality of gold: “Thou art within that, thou feelest thyself as part of that.” Through this feeling he came gradually to comprehend the nature of the sun; he felt the relationship of the quality of gold with that which works from the sun in the blood of man.

Thus he gained a perception of the entire planetary system by means of the different metals, and the pupil, who did not think about these things as intellectually as we do today, conceived the following formula:

I think about the metals;
They reveal their relationship with the planets
They are subdued by the earth; for they are born of the air.

Actually the metals which are today in the earth came out of the cosmos in an airy form, and only gradually became fluidic during the ancient Moon-period. They came over in airy form when the earth was in the ancient Sun-condition; they attained a fluid form during the Moon-period, and then they became subdued by the earth and reduced to solid form during the earth evolution. That was the second secret which was revealed to the pupil.

The third secret was to rise before the pupil when he learnt to observe how, over the surface of the earth, man and the various peoples differ. One may turn towards Africa, with its peculiar hot climate, and there find human beings who differ externally, even to the colour of their skin, from the men of Greece. One can go over to Asia, and there again find human beings different. The Greeks had a fine feeling for these external differences of man.

One of the most interesting documents which has come down from Aristotle to posterity is his writing on physiognomy; by which however is not to be understood merely the physiognomy of the face, but the physiognomy of the whole man was studied with the intention that thereby one should learn to know the true nature of man; how he has either curly or smooth hair, according to the different climates in which he lives; how not only the colour of the skin but the whole expression of the human being changes according to whether he is born in one climate or another.

Thus, just as one learned to see the reflection of the moon secrets in flowers, and the reflection of the planets in metals, so now one learned to know the real secret of man on earth through this third instruction. The natural science of that time accomplished an extraordinary amount through study of the manifold nature of man and thereby obtained an answer to the question: What was the real intention of the Gods in regard to man's primeval form?

Through the different forms, through the varied physiognomy of man over the whole earth, in the living way it was brought before the disciple, the secret of the Zodiac dawned within him. The Zodiac works on the elements of the earth and its connection with the planetary system and with the moon brings the winds at the appropriate season in one direction or another, brings also warm air to one part of the earth and cold damp to another part, thereby cutting deeply into human life. The natural scientist of those times sought the causes for these things in the influences which came from the Zodiac, influences which, modified by the planets, by the sun and the moon, then streamed on to the earth.

It was of especial interest to the natural scientists of that time to say: Here is a man with black curly hair and with a red countenance, with his nose fashioned in this or that way. He is a, man who indicates the sign of Leo, how Leo pours down its forces, strengthened or weakened by the other planets according to the position they occupy. This is a man who inwardly according to his karma carries in his liver certain characteristics. Such a characteristic in the liver, which, for instance brings about a disposition to melancholy in the life of the soul is brought about because, at a certain point of time Venus is brought into a certain aspect to Juniper, which fact influences the rays of Leo. I look into the special construction of the liver, and in this I see a cosmic determination. I see how man is affected by this cosmic determination. I can extend this to the qualities of the different races upon the earth. I see in what man experiences by reason of his atmospheric environment the secret of the Zodiac.

While the pupil was thus guided, again there arose in his heart a knowledge which he clothed in somewhat the following form:

I experience the secrets of the Zodiac in the manifold nature on man;
The relationship between the manifold nature of man and the fixed stars presents itself to my soul;
For the life of human beings is on account of this manifold nature made subject to the earth;
They are beings born of the warmth.

(Human beings are born of the warmth ether under the influence of the signs of the Zodiac. They are warmth-born.)

So man felt himself in his physiognomy as one born of warmth, only transformed during the Moon-existence, and again transformed during the earth-existence; he acquired the original basis of warmth during the ancient Saturn-time. In the same way he felt the metallity of the earth as born of the sun and the air; flowers and everything of a plant nature as born of the moon and water. He could thus feel these things because of the preparation he had undergone, because he had to some extent grasped them through the feelings stimulated in him for the perception of the elements of warm air and of cold water.

The pupil observed man in such a way that the feeling arose that man works on the elements of warm air intermingled with the elements of coldness and water. He observed man in the time of Aristotle by studying his physiognomy in such a way that he could answer the question: “How much does a man give us of the elements of warmth and air, how much does he take from us of the elements of coldness and water?” In regard to what had been developed in the soul the pupil regarded the human beings around him, and gradually learnt to regard the whole of nature in this way. This was the preparation for what later on poured over from Africa into Spain, and spread into certain regions in Central Europe as the ancient alchemy, the true alchemy—to regard everything in nature, in the cosmos, every flower, every animal, even every cloud, every formation of vapour, sand and stones, sea and river, forest and meadow in the light of the impression they give of these elements of warmth and air or of coldness and damp.

The pupil thus developed in reference to the world of nature a fine power of feeling for four qualities; in experiencing the warm air the feeling for warmth was developed in him, and at the same time a feeling for the element of air and its relation to warmth. Out of the coldness there developed the feeling for the difference between moisture and dryness; and he developed a delicate power of sensing these differences, because through these capacities of feeling he stood with the whole of his being in what the world offered.

From this standpoint, in which the pupil of Aristotle, Alexander the Great was trained, it is quite possible to understand the whole environment in which these two men lived. As Alexander was permeated with what came through such a power of feeling, he perceived the whole Greek nature, as revealed in Macedonia, in the two qualities, the quality of dampness and the quality of air. They evoked his attitude of mind at a given period in his life. He really felt that through the special kind of initiation which he had received at the hands of Aristotle, he understood the basic character of the immediate world which he experienced, but he experienced it only as the half of a whole world. “That can only be half of the world,” he said to himself. “That can only be the half.” You remember that at that time everything pertaining to nature was brought before the disciple in such a way that he really experienced nature. The following instruction could now be added to the study of the purely natural.

Aristotle's pupil Alexander the Great had learnt of his own accord to feel what the climatic influences, what the winds carried from the north-west as the elements of cold and damp, and what the winds carried from the south-west as the elements of warmth and damp, but that, to him, was only one half of a world-feeling. This was amplified in his instruction, and there arose in his own inner being the idea that to this there belonged what drifted over from the north-east, the dry cold, and what drifted over from the south-east, the dry warmth. Thus from the four directions of the wind he had learnt to distinguish the feeling of dryness, of warm dryness, of damp warmth, and of damp cold; and as a true man of that epoch he sought to reconcile these opposites.

Here in Macedonia he experienced only cold dampness or warm dampness. That must be united with the cold dryness and with the fiery dryness; that which drifts over from the north, from Asia must be united with that which drifts over from the south from Asia. From this arose that irresistible urge towards the Asiatic expeditions. By this example you will see that at this epoch of time things were somewhat different from what they were later.

Think of our modern education, of what a prince is taught today. Just think of how a prince is educated and trained for journeys of conquest. Try and imagine what relation exists between the instruction in physics which his teacher gives him and what he experiences on his warlike expeditions. Try and think of the connection between the two. The reports do not as a rule produce anything pertaining to his actions on his journeys of conquest. From such examples you can see very clearly how far removed today is the knowledge which should be brought to man for the development of his inner being, from what man himself is in his external life. At the time to which we are now alluding the endeavour was made to establish a complete unity between the knowledge which inwardly forms and fashions a man and that which he does when he stands in the world and acts.

Ancient history is taught in the schoolroom (today) but at that time the schoolroom was related to the Mysteries, and the Mysteries signified the world. A knowledge of the world was the result of the forces which predominated in the Mysteries. That gave man the impulse to carry over to Asia what was then this natural science. Then in a weakened diluted form it later came across over Spain, through Europe. One can still trace it in what Paracelsus, Jacob Boehme, Gichtel, and various others wrote and taught, culminating in such spirits as Basilius Valentinus and others.

But at first, that which was clothed in mere thought-forms, in mere logic, had to transcend all else, and the rest had to wait.

The time has now come when this other has fulfilled its task of waiting, when it must again be found as the sum total of natural knowledge. Alexander had first to bury these secrets of nature in Asia, for only their corpses were brought over to Europe. But not these corpses have now to be galvanized to life; the primeval living secrets must themselves be found again today. The necessary enthusiasm for this can indeed only come about when a really warm feeling is developed for what once existed at this turning point of time.

One must really develop a living realization of the fact that these conquests, these expeditionary journeys undertaken by Alexander which appeared externally as mere journeys of conquest were undertaken in order to find the other side of the compass in addition to the side which was known; to add the other half to that half of the world which was known. It was absolutely the search of a personal experience, and this personal experience consisted in a certain inner dissatisfaction, a certain inner discomfort which was felt in this environment of cold dampness and warm dampness, and a realisation that other feelings had to complete these.

To what extent this is of great historical significance in the evolution of the entire west, I will explain in the lectures which will be given in the near future, at the meeting of the delegates, concerning the occult basis of the historical life of humanity on the earth.

I. The secrets of the Plants

I gaze at the flowers; they reveal their relationship with the Moon-existence; they are subdued by the earth, for they are water-born.

II. The secret of the Metals

I think about the Metals; they reveal their relationship with the Planets; they are subdued by the earth, for they are air-born.

III. The secret of Man

I experience the secrets of the Animal Circle (Zodiac) in the manifold nature of man; the relationship of this manifold nature of man with the fixed stars comes before my soul; for man lives in subjection to the earth in this manifold nature he is warmth-born.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Easter is felt by large numbers of human beings as a festival connected on the one hand with the deepest and most intimate feelings of the human soul, and on the other hand with cosmic mysteries and cosmic riddles of existence. Indeed we cannot but observe the connection of Easter with the secrets and riddles of the Universe when we bear in mind the fact that Easter is a movable festival, the date of which has to be reckoned year by year from that constellation of the stars which we shall shortly consider more in detail. At the same time we must observe how many customs and sacred ceremonies have been associated with the Easter Festival for centuries—customs and ceremonies which lie very near to the heart of large numbers of humanity. These things will show us the immense values which mankind has gradually laid into the Easter Festival in the course of historic evolution.

In the first centuries of Christianity—not at its immediate foundation but in the course of the first centuries—Easter became a most important festival connected with the fundamental thought and impulse of Christianity, I mean, with that impulse which arises for the true Christian from the fact of the Resurrection of Christ.

Easter is the festival of the Resurrection. Yet at the same time it leads us back into pre-Christian times. It leads us to the festivals which were held about the time of the Spring Equinox (which still plays a part in our calculation, at least, of the date of Easter). It points to those old festivals which were connected with the reawakening of Nature—with the springing of life that grows forth once more from the Earth.

Here we already find ourselves within the very subject of these lectures; for here already we must touch upon the connection of Easter with the evolution of the Mysteries in the history of mankind.

Easter as a Christian festival is a festival of Resurrection. The corresponding Heathen festival, taking place about the same time of the year as our Easter, was a kind of Resurrection festival of Nature—the coming forth again of what was asleep in Nature throughout the winter time. But we must emphasise most strongly at this point that the Christian Easter is by no means coincident as to its inner essence and meaning with the Heathen festivals of the Spring Equinox. On the contrary, if we do want to relate it to the old Pagan times, we must connect the Christian Easter with certain festivals which, proceeding from the ancient Mysteries, were enacted at the Autumn season. This is a remarkable fact in the determination of the Easter Festival, which by its very content is obviously connected with certain of the ancient Mysteries. Easter above all can remind us of the deep and radical misunderstandings that have arisen, in the course of evolution, in the world-conceptions of mankind with regard to matters of the greatest significance. Nothing less has happened than that the Easter Festival has been confused with an altogether different one, and has thus been removed from Autumn and turned into a festival of Springtime.

We have here touched something of infinite significance in human evolution. Consider the content of this Easter Festival. What is it in its essence? It is this: Christ Jesus, the Being who stands at the centre of the Christian consciousness, passes through death. Good Friday is held in memory of this fact. Christ Jesus lies in the grave. It is a time that takes its course in three days, representing the union of Christ with Earth-existence. This time is celebrated in Christendom as a festival of mourning—the time between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Easter Sunday is the day when the central Being of Christianity rises out of the grave; it is the day of remembrance of this. Such is the essential content of the Easter Festival: the Death, the lying in the Grave and the Resurrection of Christ Jesus.

Now let us look at the corresponding ancient Heathen festival in any one of its forms. Only then shall we be able to penetrate into the connection between the Easter Festival and the Mysteries. In many places and among many people, we come across ancient Heathen festivals whose external structure—and the structure of the ceremonies which were enacted in them—is decidedly similar to the Easter-content of Christianity.

From the manifold festivals of ancient time, we may select for an example the Adonis festival. Through long, long periods of pre-Christian antiquity this festival was celebrated among certain peoples of Asia Minor. A sacred image was the central point of the festival. It was an image of Adonis—Adonis as the spiritual representative of all that is the springing and thriving force of youth in man, of all that appears as beauty in the human being.

True it is that in many respects the ancient peoples confused the substance of the image with what the image represented. The ancient religions often thus present the character of fetish worship. Many human beings saw in the image the actual and present God—the God of beauty, of the youthful strength of man, of the unfolding germinating forces which reveal in outward glory all the inner worth and inner greatness that man contains, or can contain, within him.

With songs and acts of ritual representing the deepest human grief and mourning, this image of the God was lowered into the waves of the sea, where it had to remain for three days. Or if the sea were not near it was lowered into a lake. Or again, an artificial pond was constructed near the sacred place of the Mysteries, so that the image of the God could be submerged and left for three days. During the three days the whole community associated with this cult remained in an atmosphere of deepest earnestness and stillness. After three days the image was withdrawn from the water. The songs of grief and mourning were transformed into songs of joy, hymns to the resurrected God, to the God who had come to life once more.

This was an outward ceremony which deeply stirred the hearts of large circles of mankind. And this ceremony indicated, in an outward act of ritual, what took place in the Holy of Holies of the Mysteries with every human being who was about to reach initiation. For within the Mysteries in those ancient times every human being who was to receive initiation was led into a special chamber. The walls were black, the whole space was dark and gloomy, empty save for a coffin, or something not unlike a coffin. Beside the coffin those who accompanied the candidate for Initiation broke forth into songs of mourning, songs of death. The candidate was treated like one who is about to die. He was given to understand that when he was now laid in the coffin, he would have to undergo what the human being undergoes in the first three days after death.

On the third day there appeared at a certain place, within sight of the one who lay in the coffin, a twig or a branch to represent springing, thriving life. And now the songs of mourning were transferred into hymns of joy and praise. With consciousness transformed, the man arose out of his grave. A new language, a new writing, was communicated to him; it was the language and writing of spiritual Beings. Henceforth he was allowed to see the world—for now indeed he could see it—from the standpoint of the Spirit.

What was thus enacted in the hidden depths of the Mysteries with the candidates for Initiation was comparable to the sacred cults or rituals enacted in the outer world. The content of the sacred ritual, pictorial as it was, was none the less similar in structure to what took place with chosen human beings in the Mysteries. Indeed the cult—and we may take the special cult of Adonis as representative—the cult was explained at the proper season to all those who partook in it. It was enacted in the Autumn, and those who took part in it were instructed somewhat as follows: “Behold, it is the Autumn season! The Earth is losing her adornment of plants and green foliage. All things are fading and falling. In place of the green and springing life that began to cover the Earth in Springtime, snow will soon come to envelop, or drought to lay waste, the Earth. Nature is dying, but while all things are dying around you, you are to experience that in the human being which is only half like the death you see around you in all Nature. Man also has to die. For him, too, there comes the Autumn season. And when man's life draws to a close, it is right for the hearts and minds of those who remain behind to be filled with sorrow and deep mourning. And that the full earnestness of the passage through death may come before your souls, that you may not experience it only when death approaches you yourselves, but may be mindful of it ever and again—it is enacted before you Autumn by Autumn how the divine Being who is the representative of the beauty, youth and greatness of man, dies and undertakes the same journey as all the things of Nature. Nevertheless, just when Nature is laid waste and bare, when all things in Nature are on the way to death, you also are to remember another thing. Remember how man passes through the gate of death! All that he experienced here in this earthly life was like the things that die in Autumn-time. For in this earthly realm he experiences only what is transient. But when he has passed from the Earth and lives on out into the far spaces of the Cosmic Ether, then will he behold himself growing ever greater and greater, till the whole Universe becomes his own. For three days he will live outward and outward into the wide spaces of the Universe. And then, while here on Earth the earthly eye is turned to the image of death—for the earthly eye is turned to all that dies, to all things transient—yonder in the Spirit after three days the immortal soul of man awakens. Yonder the soul arises, arises to be born again for Spirit-land, three days after passing through the gate of death.”

Deep and penetrating was the inner transformation when these things were enacted in the candidate's own person during the Initiation ceremony, in the hidden depths of the Mysteries. The profound impression, the immense and sudden jerk which the life of a man underwent in this ancient form of initiation, awakened inner forces of the soul within him. (As we shall presently see, in modern times it cannot be done in this way but must be done in quite another way.) The inner forces of the soul, the powers of seership were awakened in him. He knew that he stood henceforward no longer in the world of the senses but in the spiritual world.

I may perhaps sum up in the following words the instruction that was given, once more at the right and proper time, to the pupils in the ancient Mysteries. They were told: That which is enacted in the Mysteries is an image of what takes place in spiritual worlds, in the Cosmos. Sacred cult is itself an image of what is enacted in the sacred Mysteries. For everyone who was admitted to the Mysteries was fully clear that events which the Mysteries concealed within the earthly realm—events enacted there upon the human being—were true images of what man experiences in the wide spaces of the astral-spiritual Cosmos in other forms of existence than in this earthly life. And those who in ancient times were not admitted to the Mysteries—since according to their stage in life they could not yet be chosen to receive the vision of the spiritual world directly—were instructed in the corresponding truths through the sacred cult or ritual, that is to say, through a picture of what was enacted in the Mysteries.

Such, then, was the purport of the Mystery which we have learned to know in this example of the Adonis festival. Autumn, when earthly things were fading away, becoming waste and bare, Autumn, expressing so radically the transitory nature of all earthly things, the dying process and the fact of death—this Autumn time was to call forth in man the certainty, or at least the pictured vision, of how the death that overcomes all Nature in the Autumn, overcomes man too, nay even overcomes the representative of all beauty, youthfulness and greatness in the human soul, portrayed in the God Adonis. Even the God Adonis dies, and is dissolved in the earthly prototype of the cosmic Ether—in the Water. But even as he rises again out of the Water, even as he can be drawn forth from the Water, so is the soul of man drawn forth from the Waters of the world, that is to say, from the cosmic Ether, approximately three days after the human being here upon Earth passes through the gate of death.

It was the secret of death itself which those ancient Mysteries sought to represent in the corresponding Autumn festival. They made it visible in picture form, in that the first half of the sacred ritual coincided with the dying and the death in Nature, while on the other hand the very opposite was shown to be the essential truth for man himself. Such was the meaning and intention of the Mysteries: the human being shall turn his gaze to the death of Nature, in order to become aware how he himself dies in the outward semblance, while in his inner being he is resurrected—resurrected, to begin with, for the spiritual world. To unveil the truth about death was the meaning and purpose of this ancient Pagan festival which was connected so closely with the Mysteries.

Then in the further course of human evolution the great Event took place. What had been undergone at a certain level by the candidate for initiation in the Mysteries—the Death and Resurrection of the soul—took place even as to the body with Christ Jesus. For how does the Mystery of Golgotha appear to one who is acquainted with the Mysteries! He gazes back into the ancient Mysteries. He sees how the candidate for Initiation was led, in his soul, through death to the Resurrection of the soul; that is to say, to the awakening of a higher consciousness in the soul. The soul died, to rise again in a higher consciousness. We must above all hold fast to this, that the body did not die, but the soul died, in order to be awakened to a higher consciousness.

What the soul of every candidate for Initiation underwent, Christ Jesus underwent even in the body. That is to say, He underwent it on a different level. For Christ was no earthly man. He was a Sun-Being dwelling in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Hence what the candidate for Initiation in the ancient Mysteries had undergone in his soul, could be undergone in the entire human nature by Christ Jesus upon Golgotha.

Those who still had knowledge of the ancient Mysteries and of the above Initiation-rite—it was they who understood most deeply what had happened upon Golgotha. Indeed to this day, it is they who understood it most deeply. For they could say to themselves: For thousands and thousands of years, human beings have been led through the death and resurrection of their souls into the secrets of the spiritual world. The soul was kept separate from the body during the act of Initiation. The soul was led through death, to life eternal. What was thus experienced in the soul by a number of chosen human beings, was undergone even in the body by a Being who descended from the Sun at the Baptism by John in Jordan, and took possession of the body of Jesus of Nazareth. The act of Initiation that had been repeated again and again through long, long years, now became a historic fact.

The essential thing was that man should know: because it was a Sun-Being who took possession of the body of Jesus of Nazareth, therefore what was accomplished for the Initiates only with respect to the soul and the soul's experience, could be accomplished now even into the bodily existence by this Being. In spite of the death of the body, in spite of the dissolving of the body of Jesus of Nazareth in the mortal Earth, there could be a Resurrection of the Christ. For the Christ rises higher than the soul of the initiate could rise. The candidate for Initiation could not carry the body into those deep regions of the sub-sensible into which Christ Jesus carried it. Hence, too, the candidate for Initiation could not rise so high in resurrection as the Christ. Yet it remains true that but for this difference in respect of cosmic greatness, the ancient rite of Initiation appeared as a historic fact at the sacred place of Golgotha.

Yet even in the first centuries of Christianity there were only few who knew that a Being of the Sun, a cosmic Being, had lived in Jesus of Nazareth, that the Earth had really been fertilised by the descent from the Sun of a Being whom until then man upon Earth had only been able to behold within the Sun, by the methods cultivated at the places of Initiation. This was the essential point in Christianity, inasmuch as it was also accepted by those who had real knowledge of the ancient Mysteries. They could say: The Christ to whom we lifted ourselves up through our initiation, the Christ whom we could reach by our ascent to the Sun in the ancient Mysteries, has descended into a mortal body, into the body of Jesus of Nazareth. He has come down to Earth.

It was indeed a festival mood, nay, a mood of sublime holiness which filled the hearts and souls of those who, living in the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, had some understanding of this Mystery. Gradually, and by processes which we shall yet have to trace, what had thus been an immediate and living content of their consciousness became a memory, a festival in memory of the historic event on Golgotha. But while this “memory” was taking shape, the consciousness of who the Christ was as a Being of the Sun, became lost ever more and more. Those who had knowledge of the ancient Mysteries could not fail to know about the Being of the Christ. For they knew that the real Initiates, being made independent of the physical body and passing in their souls through death, rising into the Sun-sphere and there visiting the Christ, had received from Him—from Christ within the Sun—the impulse for the resurrection of their souls. They knew the nature of the Christ because they had raised themselves to Him. With their knowledge of this Initiation rite, the ancient Initiates knew from what took place on Golgotha that the same Being who formerly had to be sought for in the Sun, had now visited mankind on Earth. Why was it so? The sacred rite that had been enacted with the candidates for Initiation in the ancient Mysteries in order that they might reach up to the Christ within the Sun, could no longer be enacted in this way. For in the course of time, human nature had undergone a change. By the very evolution of the human being, the ancient ceremony of Initiation had become impossible. It would no longer have been possible through that ancient Initiation ceremony to visit the Christ in the Sun. It was then that He descended to enact on Earth a sacred deed to which human beings might henceforth turn their gaze.

What is contained within this secret is one of the very holiest things that can possibly be uttered on this Earth.

For how did it really appear to the human beings in the centuries following the Mystery of Golgotha?

From an ancient Initiation sanctuary man upon Earth looked upward to the Sun-existence and became aware, through his Initiation, of Christ within the Sun. Man looked out into Space in order to approach the Christ. And how did the evolution of mankind go forward in the succeeding periods? I must now represent Time itself: the Earth in one year, the Earth in a second year, in a third year, and so on in the course of Time. Spatially, the Earth is of course always present but here I have represented the course of Time. The Mystery of Golgotha has taken place. A human being living, let us say, in the eighth century A.D., instead of looking upward to the Sun from a sacred place of the Mysteries so as to reach the Christ, looks backward through the course of Time—back to the Mystery of Golgotha. At the turning-point of Time—at the beginning of the Christian era—he beholds the Mystery of Golgotha. Thus he can find the Christ within an earthly action, within an event on Earth. He finds the Christ within the Mystery of Golgotha.

Through the Mystery of Golgotha, what had formerly been a vision in Space, became henceforward a vision in Time. That was the significance of what had taken place.

We must however especially contemplate what took place during Initiation in the ancient Mysteries. It was a picture of the death of man and of his resurrection in the life beyond. Then we must consider the structure of the sacred cults, the festival of Adonis, for instance. For this in turn was a picture of what took place within the Mysteries. When we contemplate all this, these things—the three united into one—come before us in a sublime and transcendent aspect concentrated in the one historic action upon Golgotha.

Outwardly upon the scene of history there appears what was hitherto accomplished in the deep and inner Holy of Holies of the Mysteries. For all human beings there now exists what existed hitherto only for the Initiates. Men no longer need an image that is immersed and symbolically resurrected from the sea. Henceforth they shall have the thought—the memory—of what took place in all reality on Golgotha. The outward symbol, relating to a process that was experienced in Space, is now to be replaced by the inward thought and memory, without any picture to the senses—the memory of the historic event of Golgotha, experienced purely in the soul.

Strange is the course of human evolution as we perceive it in the succeeding centuries. Man's penetration into spiritual things becomes ever less and less. The spiritual content of the Mystery of Golgotha cannot find its way into the minds of men. Evolution tends now to develop the sense for material things. Men lose the inner understanding of the heart, which once told them that just where outer Nature reveals her transitoriness and appears as a dying existence, the life of the Spirit can be seen, and with it they lose their understanding for that outer festival which can most truly be felt when Autumn comes with its fading, dying process, inasmuch as the death of the Earthly and Natural corresponds to the Resurrection of the Spiritual.

Thus it becomes possible no longer for Autumn to be the time of the Resurrection Festival. Autumn loses its power to turn man's thought from the transitoriness of Nature to the eternity of the Spirit. Man now needs the support of material things, needs the support of what does not die in Nature, but springs forth again in Nature. He needs to connect his Resurrection Festival with that which is resurrected in outer Nature—the force of the seed which was laid into the Earth in Autumn-time. He takes the material as a symbol for the Spiritual because he is no longer able to receive inspiration for a true perception of the Spiritual itself. Autumn no longer has the power to make manifest through the inner power of the human soul the Eternity of the Spirit, over against what is transient in the world of Nature. Man needs the support of external Nature, of the external Resurrection in Nature. He needs to see how the plants spring out of the Earth, how the Sun increases in strength, how light and warmth increase in strength once more. He needs the Resurrection in Nature in order to celebrate the thought of the Resurrection.

At the same time he loses that immediate inner relationship which he had with the Adonis Festival, and which he can also have with the Mystery of Golgotha. The inner experience which could arise at the earthly death of man, loses its power. In that inner experience the human soul was aware how the man who in the earthly sense passes through the gate of death, undergoes in three days what can indeed fill the soul with solemnity and earnestness. Then, however, the soul must become inwardly joyful, inasmuch as out of this very death the human soul arises after three days to spiritual immortality.

The power that lay in the Adonis Festival was lost. To begin with, it was intended for humanity that this power should arise with still greater intensity. Man had gazed upon the death of the God, the death of all that is beautiful in mankind—of all that is great and filled with the strength of youth. This God was immersed in the ocean on the day of Mourning, on the day of Chara (Charfreitag is Good Friday; Chara means mourning). They fell into a solemn, earnest mood. This was the feeling they first wanted to unfold in view of the transitoriness of Nature. But then this very feeling of the transitoriness of Nature had to be transformed by the soul into a feeling of the super-sensible resurrection of the human soul after three days. When the God—or image of the God—was lifted out again, the true believer beheld the image of the human soul a few days after death. “What happens to the dead man in the Spirit, behold! it stands before thy soul in the image of the resurrected God of youthful strength and beauty!”

This truth, deeply united with the whole destiny of man, was really awakened in the human spirit year by year in the Autumn season. In that ancient time men could not have thought it possible to take their start from external Nature. That which was perceptible in the Spirit was represented in the symbolic action of the sacred cult. But the time came when this picture of ancient times had to be blotted out in order that the memory, unassisted by any image—the inward memory, experienced purely within the soul, the memory of the Mystery of Golgotha in which the same truth is contained—should take the place of the picture. To begin with, humanity had not the power for it to be so. For the Spirit descended into the very depths of the soul of man. To this day it has remained so; man needs the support of external Nature. But external Nature provides no symbol—no perfect symbol—of the destinies of man in death. Thus the thought of death itself was able to live on, but the thought of the Resurrection disappeared more and more. Though the Resurrection is still referred to as an article of faith, the fact of the Resurrection is not a really living experience in the humanity of modern times. It must become alive again through the anthroposophical conception reawakening the sense of man to the true Resurrection thought.

The Michael thought, as was said at the proper season, must lie near to the anthroposophical heart and mind as the thought of the Herald of Christ. The Christmas thought too, must be made ever deeper in the heart of the anthroposophist. And the Easter thought must become especially sacred and joyful. For Anthroposophy has to add to the thought of Death, the thought of the Resurrection. Anthroposophy itself must become like an inner festival of Resurrection for the human soul. It must bring an Easter mood into man's world-conception. This will indeed be possible if it is understood how the thought of the ancient Mysteries can live on in the true Easter thought. And this will still be possible if there arises a true conception of the body, soul and spirit of man, and of the destinies of body, soul and spirit, in the physical world, the soul-world and the spiritual world of Heaven.