The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[ 1 ] When leaving thy body behind thee thou soarest up into the ether,
Then thou becomest a god, immortal, beyond the power of death.

In this utterance of Empedocles (cf. p. 46) is epitomized what the ancient Egyptians thought about the eternal clement in man and its connection with the Divine. Proof of this may be found in the so-called Book of the Dead, which has been deciphered by the diligence of nineteenth-century scholars.¹ It is “the greatest coherent literary work that has come down to us from ancient Egypt.” It contains all kinds of instructions and prayers that were put into the tomb of each deceased person to serve as a guide when he was released from his mortal tenement. The most intimate ideas of the Egyptians about the eternal and the origin of the world are contained in this work. These views point to a conception of the gods similar to that of Greek mysticism.

Osiris gradually became the preëminent and most universally recognized of the various deities worshipped in different parts of Egypt. In him were comprized the ideas about the other divinities. Whatever the majority of the Egyptian people may have thought about Osiris, the Book of the Dead indicates that the priestly wisdom saw in him a being that might be found in the human soul herself. Everything said about death and the dead shows this plainly. While the body is given to earth and kept by it, the Eternal in man enters upon the path to the primordial Eternal. It comes before the tribunal of Osiris and the forty-two judges of the dead. The fate of the Eternal in man depends on the verdict of these judges. If the soul has confessed her sins, and has been deemed reconciled to eternal justice, invisible powers approach her and say: “The Osiris N. has been purified in the pool which is south of the field of Hotep. and north of the field of Locusts, where the gods of verdure purify themselves at the fourth hour of the night and the eighth hour of the day with the image of the heart of the gods, passing from night to day.” Thus, within the eternal cosmic order the Eternal in man is itself addressed as an Osiris. After the name Osiris comes the deceased person’s own name; and the one who is uniting with the eternal cosmic order also alls himself “Osiris”. “I am the Osiris N. Growing under the blossoms of the fig-tree is the name of Osiris N.” Thus man becomes an Osiris. Being Osiris is only a perfect stage in human development. It seems obvious that even the Osiris who is a judge within the eternal cosmic order is nothing more than a perfect man, Between being human and being divine there is a difference in degree and number. The mystic view of the mystery of number underlies this. Osiris as a cosmic being is One, yet he exists, nevertheless, undivided in each human soul. Every human being is an Osiris, yet the One Osiris must be represented as a Separate being. Man is in course of development, and at the end of his evolutionary career he becomes divine. In taking this view we must speak of Divine-ness, or becoming divine, rather than of a finished divine being, complete in himself.

[ 2 ] It cannot be doubted that, according to this view, only he can really enter upon the Osiris existence who has reached the portals of the eternal cosmic order as an Osiris. Thus the highest life which man can lead must consist in his changing himself into Osiris. Even during mortal life a true man will live as a perfect Osiris as far as he can. He becomes perfect when he lives as an Osiris, when he passes through the experiences of Osiris. This lends a deeper significance to the Osiris myth. It becomes the ideal of the man who wishes to awaken the Eternal within himself.

Osiris is torn to pieces, killed by Typhon. The fragments of his body are preserved and cared for by his consort, Isis. After his death he let a ray of his own light fall upon her, and she bore him Horus. This Horus takes up the earthly tasks of Osiris. He is the second Osiris, still imperfect, but progressing towards the true Osiris.

The true Osiris is in the human soul, who at the outset is of a transitory nature; but as such she i destined to give birth to the Eternal. Man may there: fore regard himself as the tomb of Osiris. Man's lower nature (Typhon) has killed his higher nature. Love in his soul (Isis) must nurture the dead fragments of his body, and then the higher nature, the eternal soul (Horus) will be born, who can progress to Osiris existence. The man aspiring to the highest kind of existence must repeat in himself microcosmically the macrocosmic universal Osiris process. This is the meaning of Egyptian initiation. What Plato (cf. p. 66) describes as a cosmic process—that the Creator has stretched the soul of the world on the body of the world in the form of a cross, and that the cosmic process is the redemption of this crucified soul,—this process had to be enacted in man on a smaller scale if he was to be qualified for Osiris-existence. The candidate for initiation had to develop himself in such a way that his soul-experience, his becoming an Osiris, blended into one with the cosmic Osiris process.

If we could look into the temples of initiation in which people underwent the transformation into Osiris, we should see that what took place represented microcosmically a cosmic genesis. Man who proceeded from the Father was to give birth to the Son in himself. What he actually bears within him, that is, Divinity under a spell, was to become manifest in him. This divinity is kept down in him by the power of the earthly nature; this lower nature must first be buried in order that the higher nature may arise.

This clarifies what we are told about the incidents of initiation. The candidate was subjected to mysterious procedures by means of which his earthly nature was killed and his higher nature awakened. It is not Necessary to study these procedures in detail if we understand their meaning. This meaning is contained in the confession possible to everyone who went through initiation. He could say: “I envisioned the endless perspective at the end of which lies the perfection of the Divine. I felt that the power of this Divine is within me. I buried what keeps down that bower in me. I died to earthly things. I was dead. I had died as a lower man; I was in the nether-world. I had intercourse with the dead, with those who have already become part of the eternal cosmic order. After my sojourn in the nether-world I arose from the dead. I overcame death, but now I have become a different being. I have nothing more to do with perishable nature. For me this has become saturated with the Logos. I now belong to those who live eternally, and who will sit at the right hand of Osiris. I myself shall be a true Osiris, part of the eternal cosmic order; and the judgment of life and death will be placed in my hands.” The candidate for initiation had to submit to the experience which made such a confession possible for him. It was an experience of the highest kind that the neophite passed through.

[ 3 ] Let us now imagine that a non-initiate hears of such experiences. He cannot know what has really taken place in the initiate’s soul. In his eyes the initiate died physically, lay in the grave, and rose again. What is a spiritual reality at a higher stage of existence appears, when expressed in the form of sense-reality, as an event which breaks through the order of nature. It is a “miracle”. In this sense initiation was a miracle. One who really wished to understand it must have awakened within himself powers to enable him to stand on a higher plane of existence. He must have approached these higher experiences through a course of life specially adapted to that purpose. In whatever way these prepared experiences took place in individual cases, they are always found to be of quite a definite type; so an initiate’s life is a typical one. It may be described quite apart from the single personality. In fact, an individual could only be described as being on the way to the Divine if he had passed through these definite typical experiences.

Such a personality was Buddha, living in the midst of his disciples. Jesus appeared as such a personality to his followers. Nowadays we know of the parallelism that exists between the biographies of Buddha and of Jesus. Rudolf Seydel has convincingly proved this parallelism in his book, Buddha und Christus. We have only to follow out the two lives in detail in order to see that all objections to the parallelism are futile.

[ 4 ] The birth of Buddha is announced by a white elephant that descends from heaven and declares to the queen, Maya, that she will bring forth a divine man who “will attune all beings to love and friendship, and will unite them in a close alliance.” We read in St. Luke’s Gospel: “To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her, and said, ‘Hail, thou that art highly favoured... Behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest.”

The Brahmins, or Indian priests, who know what the birth of a Buddha means, interpret Maya’s dream. They have a definite, typical idea of a Buddha, to which the life of the personality about to be born will have to correspond. Similarly we read in Matthew II, 1, that when Herod “had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born.” The Brahmin Asita says of Buddha: “This is the child which will become Buddha, the redeemer, the leader to immortality, freedom, and light.” Compare with this Luke 11, 25: “And, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon; and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel: and the Holy Ghost was upon him ... And when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him after the custom of the law, then took he him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: for mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people: a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.”

It is related of Buddha that at the age of twelve he was lost, and found again under a tree, surrounded by poets and sages of the olden time, whom he was teaching. With this incident the following passage in St. Luke corresponds: “Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the feast. And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; and Joseph and his mother knew not of it. But they, supposing him to have been in the company, went a day's journey; and they sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance. And when they found him not, they turned back again to Jerusalem, seeking him. And it came to pass that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers.” (Luke II, 41-47).

After Buddha had lived in solitude and returned, he was received by the benediction of a virgin, “Blessed is thy mother, blessed is thy father, blessed is the wife to whom thou belongest.” But he replied, “Only they are blessed who are in Nirvana,” that is, who have entered the eternal cosmic order. In St. Luke’s Gospel (XI, 27), we read: “And it came to pass, as he spake these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice and said unto him, ‘Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked.” But he said, ‘Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.'”

In the course of Buddha’s life, the tempter comes to him and promises him all the kingdoms of the earth. Buddha refuses everything in the words: “I know well that I am destined to have a kingdom, but I do not desire an earthly one. I shall become Buddha and make all the world exult with joy.” The tempter has to own that his reign is over. Jesus answers the same temptation in the words: “Get thee hence, Satan, for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. Then the devil leaveth him.” (Matthew IV, 10, 11). This description of the parallelism might be extended to many other points with the same result.

The life of Buddha ended sublimely. On a journey, he felt ill; he came to the river Hiranja, near Kuschinagara. There he lay down on a carpet which his favorite disciple, Ananda, spread for him. His body began to be luminous from within. He died transfigured, his body irradiating light, saying: “Nothing endures.”

The death of Buddha corresponds with the trans: figuration of Jesus. “And it came to pass about eight days after these sayings, he took Peter and John and James, and went up into a mountain to pray. And as he prayed, the fashion of his countenance was altered and his raiment was white and glistering.”

Buddha’s earthly life ends at this point, but it is here that the most important part of the life of Jesus begins—His suffering, death, and resurrection. What differentiates Buddha from Christ exists in the conditions necessitating the extension of the life of Christ Jesus beyond the scope of the Buddha life. Buddha and Christ will not be understood by merely mixing them. (This will become clear in the course of this book.) Other accounts of Buddha's death need not here be considered, even though they reveal profound aspects.

[ 5 ] The agreement in the lives of the two redeemers leads to the same conclusion. The narratives themselves indicate the nature of this conclusion. When the Priest-sages hear what kind of birth is to take place, they know what is involved. They know that they have to do with a God-Man; they know beforehand what kind of personality it is who is appearing. And therefore his course of life can only correspond with what they know about the life of a God-Man. In the Wisdom of their Mysteries such a life is traced out for all eternity. It can only be as it must be; it comes into manifestation like an eternal law of nature. Just as a chemical substance can only behave in a certain definite way, so a Buddha or a Christ can only live in A certain definite way. His life is not described merely by writing a fortuitous biography, but by giving its typical features that are contained for all time in the Wisdom of the Mysteries. The Buddha legend is no more a biography in the ordinary sense than the Gospels are meant to be a biography of the Christ Jesus in the ordinary sense. In neither is the merely accidental given; both relate the course of life marked out for a world-redeemer. The pattern of the two accounts is to be found in the Mystery traditions, not in outer physical history. Jesus and Buddha are, to those who have recognized their divine nature, initiates in the most eminent sense. (Jesus is the initiate by virtue of the Christ Being dwelling in Him.) Hence their lives are lifted out of things transitory, and what is known about initiates applies to them. The fortuitous incidents in their lives are not narrated, but rather it is said of them:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a God... And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” (St. John I, 1 and 14).

[ 6 ] But the life of Jesus contains more than does the life of Buddha. Buddha’s life ends with the transfiguration; the most momentous part of the life of Jesus begins after the transfiguration. In the language of initiates this means that Buddha reached the point at which divine light begins to shine in men. He faces mortal death. He becomes the light of the world: Jesus goes farther. He does not physically,die at the moment when the light of the world shines through him. At that moment he is a Buddha. But at that very moment he enters upon a stage which finds expression in a higher degree of initiation. He suffers and dies. What is earthly disappears. But the spiritual element, the light of the world, does not. His resurrection follows. He is revealed to his followers as Christ. Buddha, at the moment of his transfiguration, dissolves into the blissful life of the universal spirit. Christ Jesus once more calls the universal spirit into Present existence in human form. Such an event had formerly taken place at the higher stages of initiation in a symbolical sense. Those initiated in the spirit of the Osiris myth attained in their consciousness to such a resurrection as a symbolical experience. In the life of Jesus, this “great” initiation was added to the Buddha initiation, not as a symbolical experience, but as reality. Buddha demonstrated by his life that man is the Logos, and that he returns to the Logos, to the light, when his earthly part dies. In Jesus, the Logos itself became a person. In Him, the Word was made flesh.

[ 7 ] Therefore, what was enacted in the innermost recesses of the temples by the guardians of the ancient Mysteries has been apprehended through Christianity as a historical fact. The followers of Christ Jesus confessed their belief in Him, the initiate; in Him who was initiated in a manner unique in its magnitude. He proved to them that the world is divine. In the Christian community the wisdom of the Mysteries was indissolubly bound up with the personality of Christ Jesus. That which man previously had sought to attain through the Mysteries was now replaced by the belief that Christ had lived on earth, and that the faithful belonged to him.

Henceforward, part of what was formerly only to be gained through mystic methods could be replaced in the Christian community by the conviction that the Divine had been manifested in the Word present among them. Not that for which each individual soul underwent a long preparation was now alone decisive, but what those had heard and seen who were with Jesus, and what was handed down by them. “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which... our hands have handled, of the Word of Life... that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us.” Thus do we read in the first Epistle of St. John. And this immediate reality is to embrace all future generations in a living bond of union, and as a church is mystically to extend from race to race. It is in this sense that the words of St. Augustine are to be under " stood, “I should not believe the Gospels unless the authority of the Catholic Church induced me to do so.” Thus the Gospels do not contain within themselves testimony to their truth, but they are to be believed because they are founded on the personality of Jesus, and because the Church from that personality mysteriously draws the power to make the truth of the Gospels manifest.

The Mysteries handed down traditionally the means of arriving at truth; the Christian community propaBates truth itself. To the confidence in the mystical forces that spring up in the inmost being of man durIng initiation was to be added the confidence in the One, in the primordial Initiator.

The mystics sought to become divine, they wished to experience divinity. Jesus was divine, we must hold fast to Him, and then we shall become partakers of His divinity in the community founded by Him—this became Christian conviction. What was divine in Jesus became so for all His followers. “Lo, I am with you alway even unto the end of the world.” (St. Matthew, XXVIII 20). The one who was born in Bethlehem has an eternal character. The Christmas anthem rightly sings of the birth of Jesus as if it took place each Christmas “Christ is born to-day, the Saviour has come into the world to-day, today the angels are singing on earth.”

In the Christ-experience we should recognize a definite stage of initiation. When the mystic of pre-Christian times passed through this Christ-experience he was, through his initiation, in a state that enabled him to perceive something spiritually—in higher worlds—to which no fact in the world of sense corresponded. He experienced in the higher world what the Mystery of Golgotha comprises. Now, when the Christian mystic goes through this experience by initiation he at the same time beholds the historical event that took place on Golgotha, and he knows that in that event, enacted within the physical world, there is the same content that existed formerly only in the super sensible facts of the Mysteries. Thus there was poured out on the Christian community, through the Mystery of Golgotha, that which formerly had been poured out on the mystics within the temples. And initiation gives Christian mystics the possibility of discerning what is contained in the Mystery of Golgotha, whereas faith makes man an unconscious partaker of the mystical stream which flowed from the events depicted in the New Testament, and which has ever since pervaded the spiritual life of humanity.

• 1. (Cf. Lepsius, Das Totenbuch der alten Ägypter, (The Book Of the Dead of the Ancient Egyptians.) Berlin, 1842).

We have looked at the Apocalypse with respect to its inner spirit and we have looked at it in connection with your work as priests. One could of course say a great deal more in connection with the Apocalypse; for instance, one could unroll the whole composition of the Apocalypse, but it seems to me that this conference in Dornach will get its best content if what was said in connection with the Apocalypse will show up in priestly activity in a really practical way.

We'll only have to add one more thing today. We should consider that we're living in the consciousness soul age or at that stage of man's overall evolution where he has to gain control over his intellectuality, as it were, so that it's integrated into his individuality. Of course to begin with this age is still restricted to man's spirit or intellect, as it were, where the things which are connected with the acquisition of intellectuality occur within human thinking and reflection, although a time will come when the deeper forces of the human soul will also be taken hold of by that which now occurs more within thinking, wishing and reflecting.

At present man can only form ideas about how he should use the intellectuality that is breaking into his individuality. However, before this age of consciousness soul development is over souls will be taken hold of by intellectuality right down into their deepest emotions, feelings and passions. And then what was still sought in the stars during the Middle Ages, when one spoke of angelic intelligences in the stars and planets will live even more deeply and pervasively in men.

All of this will be deposited in men, and later on when the Jupiter period comes even man's corporeality will be taken hold of by intellectuality. However, at present, where the soul has still not been taken hold of by intellectuality in its innermost structure and men can grasp the important things in their thoughts and words, it is possible to orient priestly activities in such a way that the world goals can really be attained.

So you see things are like this; when men grab intellectuality from the cosmos—and after all, it is a wise arrangement of the world powers that he is taking possession of it—there are always unguarded moments when it becomes possible for the Ahrimanic power who is called Satan in Christian tradition to take hold of this intellectuality that men have. Satan must not be confused with the ordinary devil, who is a lower power with different characteristics. Satan has the rank of a Principality (Archai), and he took hold of this intellectuality in the course of world evolution long before it approached men in the described manner, and one could say that he possesses more intellectuality than any other being. He is trying to bind human intellectuality to his own to such an extent that men can fall out of their evolution in this way. In other words, this Ahrimanic power is trying to nullify the Mystery of Golgotha and Christ's activity.

Now this Ahrimanic power who is called Satan in Christian tradition lacks the strength to work up further than the human level of cosmic beings. So one shouldn't think that the intelligence of an angel, for instance, could be taken hold of directly by this Satanic power; this can only happen in certain exceptional cases. These exceptional cases that could occur in the future, where it might not only be possible for the Satanic power to chain men to himself through their intellects, but also to bind beings from the spheres of the angels and namely of the archangels to himself—these things still belong to the higher secrets of occultism that cannot be spoken about at present, and that can only be disclosed under certain conditions. So we can only indicate that a temptation and a seduction of beings in the hierarchy of angels and namely of archangels might be possible in the future, but we must reckon with the fact that the power who is called Satan in Christian tradition has the ability to cling to something in man's inner life that is as independent as his intellectuality. And then when the intellectuality which men contain is taken hold of by the Ahrimanic power, a man can be torn out of evolution and can be put on an entirely different course, simply because his being is pulled along with the intelligence with which Satan is able to connect himself.

This is only possible with man's intellectuality, and not with any other psychical, spiritual or bodily force in him. For a man's intelligence sits in him in such a way that it is the most independent thing in him. Everything else is connected with certain divine powers, and so if Satan were to do anything with men's feelings, sensations, desires and wishes he would still have to deal with the superhuman forces that are in these soul-capacities. Intellectuality is the first thing through which each human being can separate himself entirely from the beings who bring about his personal evolution, and it is the first thing in which he must freely connect himself through his own efforts with those powers who have accompanied his evolution right from the beginning. So that he has to identify himself freely with the last goals of the Apocalypse, where the Apocalypticer clearly indicates that the power who is the Alpha and Omega of the creator beings who go through evolution will appear, and each human being has to decide for himself to attach himself to the being who led him during the time when he was becoming cosmically mature.

To be sure, Satan can use this great moment in the evolution of humanity and he can pull men's intelligences and the men with it into his own realm. We can already see how the Satanic power is trying to bring men into its evolution in this way. The way to do this is to bring people together in the kind of associations that we see arising everywhere in a germinal form today, where the old group souls end and a new group-soulness can begin.

That is why what is occurring in eastern Europe today, for instance, is so terribly Satanic because it all tends very forcibly in the direction of putting people together in such a way that group souls become necessary. If the most intelligent people are then taken over into the lower Ahrimanic regions in this way, the groups that are formed here can only be assigned to Ahrimanic powers as groups. That would be a way for the Satanic powers to tear mankind out of earth evolution and to bring it into another planetary evolution. That kind of activity with a group soul character can only succeed if the intellectual element becomes completely emancipated in a certain way.

Very clever beginnings in this direction are being made in the east today, and priests should understand these beginnings for their work, because they are becoming manifest in a very forcible way in the east, but they're also present in central and western Europe.

For example, something that seems to be more or less harmless in exoteric life but which must be discussed very seriously is the way that psychology is being allowed to pass over into an experimental observation of human souls. This is one of the methods that will eventually prevent the soul elements from working from man to man in the way that the old divine powers intended, and psychical things will be determined in a numerical way or some other way instead by the emancipated intellectuality.

These things in central Europe and in the West are still relatively harmless. However just consider, for example, that a statistical, intellectualistic way of looking at things that is emancipated from men's soul life has arisen in the west through William James and others. They apply statistical methods to the inner conversion of human beings or to what one could call a finding of one's inner religious bearings—which occurs in many people just before they're 20 years old. Many people also experience an inner transformation after they're 20, which is like a whirling up of the Godhead out of their own soul.

In the U.S. they determine the percentage of the population that undergoes such inner conversions, and they treat things in a statistical manner. The Satanic thing about this is the statistical treatment, the compilation of data, the emancipated intellect. All these conversions are really the results of karma, but then one has to look at each particular case. You will find that statistical methods are praised to the skies in all scientific fields today, if you follow such things at all. People can't penetrate inner things anymore, and they try to arrive at laws through statistics everywhere.

This is the hardest to combat in the medical field, where it has caught on in the most terrible way, and where all clinical methods tend in this direction. One simply records whether medicaments have a positive or negative effect, etc., in a statistical manner. This statistical element is becoming established, but it is completely worthless in this field. For it really tells one nothing to know how many cases went one way and how many went the other way. The important thing is to have a really thorough understanding of the individual case, no matter how it turns out. Only when all the cognitional methods have been pressed into the service of a study of the individual cases and their individual forms,—only after one has everything else through individual observations can one use statistics at the end and say that the thing was favorable in so and so many cases and unfavorable in the rest. As you know, statistics are very popular in social studies and social democracy.

The statistical approach has also produced some very nonsensical things in connection with suicides and crazy people. One determines what percent of the people in particular professions committed suicide or went crazy. But it has no real value to know this. Because the important thing is to know why this individual committed suicide and why that individual became insane. And so with regard to this statistical approach which scientists think is so important today when they write about theories of knowledge,—it's really as if Satan were loose: it's really quite terrible.

This approach has been successful for the Satanic power in central Europe and in the east. It became a philosophy in Avenarius and Mach, who were studied by leading Bolshevik philosophers, who then brought the thing to Russia and made it practical. Even good natured people who want evolution to proceed in an orderly way don't pay much attention to the fact that the seeds for Bolshevism were laid in central Europe decades ago and were carried over to Russia; it's as if one takes a seedling and transports it to another place where it is supposed to grow up.

Thus this Satanic power is working hard today and he turns to people everywhere and appeals to their emancipated intellect that is disconnected with things in some way. This applies to the soul, to the spirit, to inner conversions, etc. If Satan were to succeed in bringing about what he wants to do within a certain time, what has to approach then would occur in a harmful way for the evolution of humanity.

For the events of which the Apocalypticer speaks will come. It's just a question of how they will occur. There's only two possibilities: either human evolution will proceed in accordance with the intentions of the gods, or it will not. Intellectuality is breaking in now and men are becoming more and more intelligent through their own efforts, and not through inspiration. That is breaking in. But on the other hand mankind has been kept weak by influences that come from the Luciferic side. Even though the individual element is the only salutary thing for mankind in this age of the individuality, which is really a Christian age, groups will form, but these group formations must be taken away from the danger that they're in.

Through the efforts that the Satanic power is making to acquire the intellectual forces of humanity, a time will come when this Satanic power will be so strong that it will approach all groups that will have formed. So that it will really come about that Satan's power will work towards the four corners of the world, and these smaller and larger groups—Gog and Magog—will be exposed to the temptation and the seduction of the Satanic power. What will be decided then is whether or not those who have begun to work with spirituality have developed such an intensity that human intellectuality can be led to where it belongs with the aid of the Michael power, namely, to the starting powers who were connected with the origins of human evolution, and who want to lead what men have become further, although men are left free. A great deal will depend upon whether; men will get to the point where they will fully understand real spirituality that has an inner order. In priestly work one must already look at these affairs of humanity now, for only if one succeeds in directing everything into channels that run along these lines will the great seduction scene that Satan intends with Gog and Magog turn out in a way that is beneficial for human evolution.

Otherwise what men have experienced under the influence of their developing individualities; since the year 666 after the beginning of Christian evolution will someday have to be torn out of humanity. Darkness would be spread over all previous human incarnations and a new world evolution would replace the earthly one. We can already see the beginnings of this quite clearly, and we can also see the great danger that mankind is in today. Ahrimanic powers possess an almost unbelievably large amount of intellectuality, and they use men's vanity, untruthfulness and all of their other weaknesses in order to win them over. For instance, it is really quite terrible how the Satanic powers used the vanities of men at the beginning of the world war in order to create a tremendous turmoil in a few days—after there had been a very deep state of sleep—which put people in a great uproar, so that they're still not sure what really happened.

But it's only a phase. There are much worse phases in the purely intellectual so-called spiritual battles of the present. For where can one find truth anymore? One sees that things are being introduced everywhere in such a way that truth of action or a true way of working is becoming less and less important for men today. Just think of how they're increasingly trying to put the spiritual life under the control of the state. Just look at how much of our spiritual life is under state control.

All of these things expose humanity to a great danger, but men are not inclined to develop a real understanding along these lines. You could see this when the first attempt was made to do something with the threefolding movement so that the seduction by Gog and Magog that is to happen in the future can be brought into channels that are favorable for humanity. The threefolding idea should have led mankind over the threshold of evolution, and also would have had to lead it across, but the way it was received shows the tremendous dangers that mankind is exposed to with respect to these things, and priests should take these things very seriously.

There was an individual in the early Christian centuries who lived in the place where the actual church battle occurred which then made preparations in Europe for the Christianity that had been present in Rome throughout the centuries, who experienced the year 666 and perceived what really went on there with a certain clairvoyant power. This particular individual saw quite clearly and spiritually that the Satanic power was preparing itself for such a mission. Like many other people, this individual later confused the Satanic power that Michael knows is higher than he is, with the devil of the Middle Ages; he speaks of the devil, but in such a way that one sees that he really means the Satanic power. He reincarnated in Berlin in the first half of the 19th century; he was a high school teacher by the name of Drandorf. He spoke about the devil, that is, about Satan, and he wrote an article Is the Devil a Figment of the Imagination? You should also study his book on aesthetics some time. Drandorf remained relatively unknown; the consistorial and supreme consistorial counselors in Berlin were his enemies.

What all of this amounts to is: will you priests be able to represent the spiritual world in its full reality and not just in the sentimental way in which this has occurred everywhere in the last few centuries, so that one doesn't want to bring in the evil powers whenever one is speaking about the spirit. In other words, the main question is whether there is enough energy among you to really represent spirituality. The main thing is that such things like a knowledge of karma or an honest look, at earlier earth lives presuppose the same attitude of soul as the perception of the celebration of transubstantiation during an act of consecration of man.

These ideas must become real for men again. Only if they become real will it become possible to bring everything that is connected with the perspectives for humanity which the Apocalypticer wanted so much to present, into the right channels. It should be emphasized that the things that were discussed here in connection with the Apocalypse are truths which one should not receive without uniting them with one's whole being, which one should not receive without looking upon them as a kind of communion.

So one would like to say that a church is outwardly real, and it embraces the faithful members of the congregation. And the priesthood must look upon itself as that group of people in the church through whose activity a spiritual element flows into humanity. For this they need the right understanding and a little chapel for the sacraments and the consecrated bread and wine, which contains the secret of transubstantiation.

And one would like to say: If we imagine that we have a chalice, in which transubstantiation takes place, then men look for a way to the Father through transubstantiation. They look for a way to that creative power in the primal world which is present in there in a fully real way, and which therefore cannot be found if one only goes towards the material or only towards the spiritual. It can only be found if one discovers that the spiritual and the material are a unity. An understanding of the world is only present today when a transubstantiation is carried out at an altar. A sacred search for the Father really still occurs there, and here the Son always shows men the way to the Father; the Son who now mediates the way to the spirit.

And so when a man looks at what appears everywhere in the physical things during transubstantiation he can find the completely hidden spirit and the working of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones in the physical things. Their concealed activity becomes manifest as physical substances. If one wants to have the latter as something spiritual, one has to take the path to the Father. The path to the Father is indicated by the Son, and he then brings it about that the spiritual appears out of the physical.

Bread is bread, but one can look for the Father in it; this can also be shown for the wine. Christ shows the way; the transubstantiation puts an aura around the bread; man experiences the spirit in the aura. The wine reinforces what is present in the bread (drawing: sun). And so one can say that the longing for the Father is present in the sensory aspect that conceals the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones. Christ leads each human being on the path, so that Kyriotetes, Dynamis and Exusiai become active before him in the way ye indicated yesterday, and he ascends into that region where he can only perceive the spirituality of the spiritual world today in angels, archangels and Archai, who however have the Holy Spirit in their midst.

To understand this and to draw the right conclusion from it today is written in the Apocalypse. What does that mean? It means that the one who understands it finds his own understanding already traced out in the Apocalypse. Hence one can say that whether or not the Apocalypse is speaking about you depends upon you and upon whether you will it.

For if you take the impulses in the Apocalypse into your work as priests in a truly spiritual way, you will be the ones who are spoken of in the Apocalypse, who will come and will ward off the power of the beast, the false prophet and Satan. And then at least in your mind you will always think that the book of the Apocalypse is placed underneath the chalice when it is standing there for the transubstantiation. And as you imagine that the chalice is standing on the apocalyptic book, you will be able to say to yourselves: My vocation is in the latter. And what we do over it is the carrying out of my vocation.

And so I didn't want to give you a theoretical exposition during this conference. After the justified wish arose in you to hear something about the Apocalypse I wanted to give you what I did and therewith I wanted to place the Apocalypse underneath the chalice for you, at least in your minds. That is the goal I had in mind for these lectures. You will definitely succeed in attaining the things that are possible if you intensify the ideals of your work as greatly as you can if you make these serious studies of the Apocalypse into the innermost impulse of your own activity. That is what I wanted to place before you at the end of these reflections. You can imagine that the most intensive thoughts about an intensive, forceful activity that is worthy of your great task will accompany everything that you will do in connection with these reflections.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Editor’s Note

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

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

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

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

My dear Friends,

I would like today to centre our study around a scene from a play of Hamerling's that can serve to illustrate many things that I have been explaining. A course of lectures on a subject of this kind is necessarily all too short, and I can in any case do no more than make a few suggestions in the hope that these may stimulate you in your work. None the less, although our time is short, I propose to use the present hour to throw light by practical example upon the importance of what I have said about developing, in preparation for speaking on the stage, a feeling for word and a feeling for sound, in contradistinction to the feeling for sense and idea. today, therefore, we will take this practical demonstration as a basis for our study; and it is my intention to speak the parts in such a way as will enable you to glean at least an elementary understanding of how a reading rehearsal should go, if it is to prepare the ground for the actual performance of the play on the stage. Thus, having in the first part of our course given our attention to the forming of the speech, we shall now be considering all that has to do with production as such, with the right forming of the stage-picture.

It goes without saying that before any such rehearsal, the explanations I have been giving of what is required for an artistic way of speaking must have already taken root in the unconscious, and be present there as artistic instinct. Where mention is made of these matters at all in rehearsal, it will be presumed that in those who are to take part, the feeling for sound and the feeling for word have, by long practice, become a complete matter of habit. It will, in fact, be of quite other matters that one will have to speak there, alluding only as need arises to the fundamental principles of speech formation; for of these the actor should bring with him an intimate knowledge, no less surely than a pianist who is preparing himself—or, maybe, a pupil—for a concert brings with him the faculty he has acquired for piano-playing.

The scene I propose to take is the opening scene of a drama of Robert Hamerling, entitled Danton and Robespierre, a play that is concerned, as the title tells us, with the French Revolution. I have chosen it because I think the moods that come into consideration for this scene—and I need not remind you how important it is for the moods to find clear expression in the performance—are such as can easily be conveyed to the minds and hearts of people in general. For they are unmistakable and sharply distinguishable in their colouring. The scene is moreover also valuable for us, in that the moods give opportunity for transforming, by stage technique, even the most prosaic content into an artistic formation of sound and word.

We are here transported into an important moment in the history of the French Revolution, when the mood of the public was undergoing a change. That stage in the revolution is just being reached when the popularity of Danton is beginning gradually to give way before the popularity of Robespierre. A great number of people are on the point of transferring their loyalty and devotion from the one to the other.

Let us first of all see that we understand the true nature of the people's loyalty to Danton. Some were loyal to him out of a sincere and faithful devotion, in others their loyalty was prompted rather by their own political aspirations; but all might be said to regard him with what I may almost call a savage admiration. Consequently, we find permeating the scene something of the sound- and word-feeling—I am speaking here from the point of view of stage technique—that results from the working together of a (wonder and admiration for Danton) and o (a certain rude affection for the man). The scene is pervaded by an a-o (ah-oh) mood, in the sense in which I have explained this to you in the earlier lectures. Tune your feeling to the sounds a-o, and you will have the mood that prevails at the beginning of the scene.

Loyalty to Robespierre was of quite another kind. At first it only reached men's hearts in a fitful, spasmodic way. The lean and lanky man, looking so like a schoolmaster, whose words cut like knives, did not easily inspire admiration in his fellowmen; he had to seize on every opportunity to win it. In fact, the first stage of Robespierre's popularity was marked by a kind of wariness and caution. In the case of individuals as well as of the masses, it was out of a certain defensive attitude that admiration for Robespierre was born. Translated into feeling for sound, it is a sounding together of e (ay in ‘say’) and a. So that in the people's feeling for Robespierre we have the mood that you can hear in e-a.

In this scene, therefore, which evinces throughout a delicate instinctive feeling on Hamerling's part for sound and word, we have to find the transition in the whole speaking of the parts from a-o to e-a. And we shall be able to do so if we look into the scene carefully. That is indeed the reason I have chosen it, because of all we can learn from it.

Hamerling built up the scene with an instinctive discernment for what is required in dramatic art. I shall draw attention, as we go along, to features that would require to be noted in the reading rehearsals. My remarks will naturally be rather sketchy; in actual rehearsals, the various points would need to be further elucidated. For we have here a scene that can provide us with an excellent lesson in the very things we are concerned with in these lectures.

Note how we are introduced, first of all, to a countryman who had been in Paris fifteen years before and never once since. The man has been deaf during the last six years, and on this account it has easily come about that he has as good as slept through whatever echoes of the big events penetrated into the provinces; he has heard nothing of all that went on. He was treated for his deafness by the village barber who was also something of a surgeon, as was still usual in those days, but with no particular success; and he was advised to go to Paris. One can certainly have one's doubts as to whether even in Paris the cure would be such an easy matter! However, here he is again in Paris, cured of his deafness and bearing his part in the change-over of moods that I have described—but all the time as one who has only just become able after six years to hear what is being said around him. You will find at once the basic tone for this man's speaking if you give yourself up to an a feeling that is tinged with o. Let us see what this will mean. For throughout the first part of the scene, the countryman will be the chief figure. The whole attention of the audience will be centred upon him. It might even be said that the other characters are present only in order to give colour and variation to the main interest that attaches throughout to this man. Actually, the success of the play as a whole will depend to a great extent upon how the part of the countryman is played in this first scene.

We know of course that a signifies wonder and admiration. The mood is a little modified in this character of the countryman, but the actor will do the part well if he takes pains to speak, as much as he can, with his mouth open. (I shall be dealing with gesture and mime in the later lectures; today I will confine my remarks to the speaking.) This will allow the a mood, which is the prevailing mood of the scene, to pass almost imperceptibly into o, which is what the part requires.

From the very outset, we sense also that a change of mood is imminent; we are moving towards the transition from the a-o to the e-a mood. This is portrayed for us with wonderful artistic skill. You can feel here with what a delicate touch Hamerling works; and that is what I want you to notice before all else—the artistic achievement, quite apart from the prose content of the scene. The countryman is put there on purpose that we may be still hearing the echo of the mood connected with Danton, while at the same time having our expectation aroused for the gradual transition to the mood that is connected with Robespierre, the mood that we can clearly detect in the second part of the scene where the conversation of the various characters goes clanging back and forth like sounding brass.

So much for a rough sketch of the mood in which you will have to experience this scene if you want to take part in it and form your speaking in the right way.

The scene is laid in an open space in front of Notre-Dame.

DER LANDMANN. Wenn ich nur erfahren könnte, warum sie den steinernen Bildern überall rote Mützen aufsetzen... Ich finde mich nicht mehr zurecht in diesem verwünschten Paris, obgleich ich vor fünfzehn Jahren einmal dagewesen.

(Zwei Bürger treten auf.)

ERSTER BURGER. Auf dem Stadthause wimmelt's bereits wie in einem Ameisenhaufen.—

ZWEITER BURGER. Mein Nachbar, der Barbier Rabaud, hat soeben die Göttin der Vernunft frisiert.

---

COUNTRYMAN. If only I could find out why the statues everywhere have red caps on their heads.... I no longer know my way about in this accursed Paris although I was once here fifteen years ago.

(Enter two citizens.)

FIRST CITIZEN. The Town Hall's already swarming like an ant-heap?

SECOND CITIZEN. My neighbour, the barber Rabaud, has just been dressing the hair of the Goddess of Reason.

These citizens are fellows of quite another stamp than our countryman. They are Parisians, who exhibit to the full the mood that was then uppermost in Paris; and they give a new colouring to the countryman's words that have set the motif at the beginning of the scene. We are to think of the first citizen as having a kind of i (ee) mood, and the second a rather quieter and more serious ii (French ü in ‘du’) mood. You will remember how I explained these in the earlier lectures.

‘ZWEITER BÜRGER: Mein Nachbar, der Barbier Rabaud, hat soeben die Göttin der Vernunft frisiert.’

Yes, you are right! The audience will laugh at these words; but they must be spoken with all the seriousness of one who is taking a responsible part in a revolution. And that is a seriousness of an altogether different stamp from the seriousness with which we are accustomed to approach everyday affairs.

You have to picture the countryman saying those first words of his alone, to himself. Then the citizens come an the scene. They stand at a little distance from him, and now he goes up to them.

DER LANDMANN. (sich nähernd) Auf ein Wort, ihr Herren—

ERSTER BÜRGER. ‘Ihr Herren?’—Da seht die ländliche Unschuld!—Es gibt keine Herren mehr, Bauerntölpel!

DER LANDMANN. Um Vergebung, wie komm' ich von hier in die Königstrasse?

ERSTER BÜRGER. Es gibt keine Könige mehr. Die Strasse heisst jetzt Sansculottenstrasse.

LANDMANN. Finde mich nicht mehr zurecht hier in Paris, obgleich ich vor fünfzehn Jahren dagewesen. Alle Plätze, alle Strassen anders.—Heut' Morgen komm' ich an einer Kirche vorüber, denke: trittst ein, hörst eine Messe. Da seh' ich ein Gedräng' von Leuten, und auf der Kanzel steht ein Mann, der predigt. Komme gerade recht zum Worte Gottes, denk' ich und hör' andächtig zu. Da merk' ich aber, dass der Mann auf der Kanzel entsetzlich fluchte, obgleich ich ihn nicht recht verstand. War so ein schneidiges, gelbes, dünnes Männchen, meinte jeden Augenblick, es werde ihm der Schaum vor den Mund treten. Als er aufhörte zu reden, da fingen die Leute wüst zu schreien an und taten wie besessen und klatschten gar mit den Händen, dass mir die Ohren gellten.—Ich schlug ein Kreuz und ging.

ZWEITER BÜRGER. (lachend) Armer Tropf, du bist unter die Frommen der Jacobinerkirche geraten.—

LANDMANN. Darauf kam ich in eine andere Kirche.
Da sah ich einen Heiland auf dem Kreuz:
dem war ein grosser Schnurrbart
angestrichen, und eine rote Mütze aufgesetzt,
und drunter stand geschrieben: ‘Jesus Christ
von Nazareth, der erste Sansculotte’.
Weiss denn die Obrigkeit von solchem Unfug nichts?

ZWEITER BÜRGER. Mensch, hör' einmal, wie kommt's, dass du so wenig Wind hast vom neuesten Weltlauf? Sitzt ihr Bauern auf den Ohren?

LANDMANN. Ich bin sechs volle Jahre taub gewesen. Vorige Woche—

ZWEITER BÜRGER. Dekade sagt man jetzt—DekadeLANDMANN. Ei, wie? Dekade muss ich sagen? Also vorige Dekade—doch nein, es war noch Ende April—

ZWEITER BÜRGER. Floreal, du verwünschter Kerl, Floreal—

LANDMANN. Floreal? Potztausend! Ihr habt eine verwunderliche Art zu reden in Paris!—Nun also im Floreal sagte ich zu unserem Dorfbader: ‘Herr’, sagte ich, `ihr versteht den Teufel von der Sache; ich gehe nach Paris und lasse mich dort heilen!’ Gesagt, getan. Ich ging, als ich das Reisegeld beisammen hatte, und verwichenen Sonntag—

ERSTER BÜRGER. Es gibt keinen Sonntag mehr.

LANDMANN. Was? keinen Sonntag?

---

COUNTRYMAN. (approaching) A word, gentlemen—

FIRST CITIZEN. ‘Gentlemen?’ Hark to his innocence! There aren't any gentlemen nowadays, you country bumpkin!

COUNTRYMAN. Beg pardon, how do I get to King Street?

FIRST CITIZEN. There aren't any more kings. The street's called Sansculotte Street now.

COUNTRYMAN. Oh, I'm properly astray in your Paris although I was here fifteen years ago. All the squares, all the streets, different.—This morning I came to a church and thought to myself: let's go in and hear Mass. Inside I find a crowd of folk and a man in the pulpit preaching. Just in time to hear God's word, think I, and listen all devout. But then I notice that the man in the pulpit is using terrible language, though I didn't understand him well. He was such a sharp-spoken, yellow, lean little bit of a man; it seemed every moment as if he was going to foam at the mouth. As soon as he stopped talking the people began to cry out wildly, behaved as if possessed, and clapped their hands enough to break my ear-drums.—I crossed myself and came out.

SECOND CITIZEN. (laughing) Poor simpleton, you landed up among the pious worshippers at the Jacobins' Church.—

COUNTRYMAN. Thereupon came I to another Church
And there I saw a Saviour on the Cross:
A great moustache was daubed upon His face,
A red cap had been set upon His head,
While underneath was written ‘Jesus Christ
Of Nazareth, the first of sansculottes’.
Do those who rule know nothing of such shame?

SECOND CITIZEN. Listen, you man. How comes it that you know so little of what's going on now in the world? Do you peasants stop up your ears?

COUNTRYMAN. I've been deaf over six years. Last week—

SECOND CITIZEN. We say decade now—decade

COUNTRYMAN. Eh? Decade have I got to say? Well, last decade–but no, it was still April—the end of April—

SECOND CITIZEN. Floreal, confound you, Floreal

COUNTRYMAN. Floreal? Zounds! You have an odd way of talking in Paris !—So in Floreal I said to our village barber, Sir,' say I,’ you don't understand a damned thing about it. I'm going to Paris to be cured.' No sooner said than done. Directly I'd got together the journey money, I started; and last Sunday—

FIRST CITIZEN. There's no Sunday any more.

COUNTRYMAN. What? No Sunday?

The name of the month is not after all a matter that touches him very nearly; that he can accept. Now he is called upon to grasp the further fact that there are no longer any Sundays!

ERSTER BÜRGER. Quintidi, guter Freund, wenn Euch Euer Leben lieb ist—

LANDMANN. Nun meinetwegen! Am Crainte de Dieu also kam ich hier in Paris an, und heute, Gott sei Dank—

ZWEITER BÜRGER. Gott sei Dank? Mensch, du nennst da ein bankrottes Haus! Die Firma Gott und Sohn mit der Prokuraführung des heiligen Geistes hat falliert—

LANDMANN. Was? auch keinen Gott? da soll ja doch—

ZWEITER BÜRGER. Räsoniere nicht, Mensch, und schweig, und lass' deine Füsse, so geschwind sie können, dich wieder nach deinem Dorfe zurücktragen. Du könntest Unglück haben auf dem Pflaster von Paris. Du könntest hier deinen Kopf verlieren, unversehens, wie einen Knopf von deinen Hosen. Mach' dich auf die Beine, Mensch—du bist verdächtig—

LANDMANN. Wieso verdächtig? Was nennt ihr denn verdächtig?

ZWEITER BURGER.Verdächtig? Sieh', das ist zum Beispiel einer,
der Lilien in seinem Garten pflanzt—
auch einer, dessen Bruder oder Vetter
ins Ausland ging mit einem Emigranten
als Kammerdiener—oder einer, der
im Traum das Wörtlein König flüstert—oder
der bleich wird, wenn sie seinen Nebenmenschen
an die Laterne hängen—

Mach', dass du fortkommst, sonst lassen sie dich den Karpfensprung machen auf dem Grèveplatz—

LANDMANN. Ich verstehe euch nicht.

ZWEITER BURGER. Ich will sagen, sie werden dich durchs rote Fenster gucken lassen—

LANDMANN. Ich verstehe euch noch immer nicht.

ZWEITER BÜRGER. Dummkopf! sie werden dich (macht eine bezeichnende Geberde) mit dem grossen Nationalrasiermesser rasieren! Verstehst du's noch nicht ?—Du wirst das grosse Los in der Lotterie der heiligen Guillotine gewinnen! Verstehst du's jetzt?

LANDMANN. Hol' mich der Geier, wenn ich diese Heilige jemals im Kalender gelesen habe.

ERSTER BÜRGER.
Das ist eine wunderliche Heilige.—
So eine Art von Eisenjungfrau, scharf
verseh'n mit Schneidezähnen—Denke dir
zwei Galgenhölzer und ein blankes Beil
Querbalkengleich von oben—nun, du legst
den Kopf auf einen Block—das Beil fällt nieder,
ein wenig von der Seite—so—und sichelt
den Kopf im Hui so glatt und reinlich dir
herunter, dass es eine Lust zu sehn. Der Kopf
merkt gar nicht, dass er keinen Rumpf mehr hat,
und niest deshalb auch manchmal unbefangen,
als wäre nichts geschehn, noch in dem Sack,
in welchen ihn der Knecht des Büttels wirft—
als hätt' er etwa nur’ne starke Prise
geschnupft.—Guillotinieren heisst man das:
's ist’ne schöne, sanfte Todesart.

LANDMANN. Guillotiniert man viel?<

ERSTER BÜRGER. So ein Schock täglich; auch mehr, wenn schönes Wetter ist.

---

FIRST CITIZEN Quintidi, friend, if you value your life—

COUNTRYMAN. Oh, well, it's all the same to me! So in the fear of God I came here to Pans, and today, thank God—

SECOND CITIZEN ‘Thank God?’ Why, man, that firm's gone bankrupt! The house of God and Son, with its junior partner the Holy Ghost, has failed—

COUNTRYMAN. What? No God either? But then—

SECOND CITIZEN. No arguing, man. Shut up, and let your feet carry you back to your village as quick as they can. You might come to harm in the streets of Paris. You might lose your head unexpectedly like a button off your breeches. Make off, man, you're a suspicious character—

COUNTRYMAN. What d'you mean, suspicious? What d'you call suspicious?

SECOND CITIZEN.
Suspicious? Hark, this man, for instance, is:
The one who lilies in his garden plants—
And also one whose brother or whose cousin Follows some emigrant as serving-man
To foreign parts—or then again a man
Who whispers in his dreams the small word ‘King', Or turns a chalky white to see them hang
One of his fellows to the lamp-post?

Make haste and be off, otherwise you will come to a sorry end on the Place de Grève?

COUNTRYMAN. I don't understand you.

SECOND CITIZEN. I'm wanting to tell you that they'll make you look through the’ red window'—

COUNTRYMAN. I still don't understand.

SECOND CITIZEN. Blockhead! They'll do this (makes a descriptive gesture), they'll shave you with the great national razor! Don't you understand yet ?—You'll win the big prize in the lottery of Saint Guillotine. Now do you understand?

COUNTRYMAN. The devil take me if I've ever seen that saint in the Calendar.

FIRST CITIZEN.
This is a very funny kind of saint,
This maiden made of iron and well provided
With finely sharpened teeth that bite. Just think,
Two gallows posts and then a shining axe
In cross-beam fashion from above—you lay
Your head upon a block, the axe comes down
A little from one side, like this, and mows
Your head inside your hat so smoothly down,
So neatly off—a pleasure 'tis to see!
Your head marks not that it has lost its trunk
And therefore sometimes sneezes, quite unmoved,
Just as if nought was wrong, e'en in the sack
As if it had, p'raps, taken a good pinch
Of snuff—it's guillotining that the people call it.
It is a fine and easy way o' dying.

COUNTRYMAN. Do they do much guillotining?

FIRST CITIZEN. Quite a lot, every day, and more when the weather's fine.

And now a sansculotte makes his appearance. When you come to look carefully at this sansculotte, you will find you can best enter into his part by combining the a mood with the i mood. For he has undoubtedly wonder and astonishment, and these have fired him with enthusiasm; but he has at the same time, as it were in the background, the pleasure and enjoyment that his own self-consciousness affords him.

(Ein Schwarm von zerlumpten Männern und Weibern kommt gezogen, voran ein Sansculotte, der ein Beinkleid auf einer Pike trägt.)

Wüstes Geschrei: Ça ira! Ça ira!

DER SANSCULOTTE. (zu dem LANDMANN und den beiden BÜRGERN) Angeschlossen, Patrioten! angeschlossen und eingestimmt! Ça ira! Zu Ehren der Hose da, die wir eben einem Aristokraten abgezogen, weil er auf keine andere Weise ein Sansculotte werden wollte. Ça ira!

WEIBER. (den LANDMANN umringend) Komm auf ein Tänzchen, Bäuerlein! Komm, wir tanzen die Carmagnole!

SANSCULOTTE. (zum LANDMANN, ihm ins Ohr schreiend) Ça ira gesungen, du Schelm, Ça ira!

LANDMANN. (ängstlich) Verzeiht, ich bin gar nicht musikalisch!

SANSCULOTTE. Höre, Kerl! wenn du nicht dümmer bist als die Rinder in deinem Stall, so musst du Ça ira brüllen können, so gut als einer—

LANDMANN. Verzeiht, ihr Herren—

SANSCULOTTE. ‘Ihr Herren!’ Habt ihr's gehört? An die Laterne mit dem Schuft!

---

(A swarm of ragged men and women come straggling along, led by a sansculotte holding aloft a pair of breeches on his pike.)

Wild shouting of the song ‘Ça ira, Ça ira!’

SANSCULOTTE. (to the COUNTRYMAN and the two CITIZENS)
All united and all of one mind, patriots! All united and all of one mind! Ça ira! Do honour to the breeches here that we've taken off an aristocrat, because he wouldn't be a sansculotte anyhow else! Ça ira!

WOMEN. (surrounding the COUNTRYMAN) Come and dance, peasant! Come along with you, we're dancing the carmagnole!

The sansculotte has noticed that the countryman does not hear very well.

SANSCULOTTE. (to the COUNTRYMAN, shouting in his ear)
Ça ira's being sung, you knave. Ça ira!

COUNTRYMAN. (anxiously) Excuse me, I'm not a bit musical!

SANSCULOTTE. Listen, fellow! If you're not more stupid than your own oxen you must be able to roar out Ça ira as well as a—

COUNTRYMAN. Excuse me, gentlemen?

SANSCULOTTE. ‘Gentlemen!’ Did you hear that? To the lamp-post with the blackguard!

In those days anyone who dared in Paris address a man as ‘gentleman’ was hung up on the nearest lamp-post.

ERSTER BURGER. Lasst ihn laufen; er ist volle sechs Jahre taub gewesen and erst heute wieder geheilt worden.

SANSCULOTTE. Dann hätte das erste, was er hörte, sein sollen, dass es keine Herren mehr gibt. Nicht einmal der Mainzer Nachtwächter singt mehr: ‘Lobet Gott den Herrn!’ sondern: ‘Lobet Gott den Bürger!’—Schlingel! kein Franzose benennt jetzt mehr den anderen Herr, sondern—

LANDMANN. Ich begreife, man sagt jetzt Kerl, Tropf, Schlingel, Schelm, und so dergleichen—

SANSCULOTTE. Was?

LANDMANN. Ihr tituliert mich so—

SANSCULOTTE. Dummkopf! das ist was anderes. Bürger sind jetzt alle Franzosen, hörst du! nicht mehr, noch weniger!

LANDMANN. So sind wir's draussen auch in der Provinz, so gut als ihr, und können ein Wort mit drein reden?

SANSCULOTTE. ‘Dreinreden?’ Hört ihr, Leute ? Der Kerl ist ein Föderalist! Ein verlaufener Girondistenknecht! er faselt von Autonomie der Provinz!

---

FIRST CITIZEN. Let him be; he's been deaf for six years and only just cured today.

SANSCULOTTE. Then the first thing he ought to have heard is that there are no more gentlemen. Not even the night watch at Mainz calls out any more ‘Praise God, gentlemen!’ but ‘Praise God, citizens!’—You clown, no Frenchman calls another ‘gentleman’ any longer, but—

COUNTRYMAN. I know. Now you say fellow, booby, clown, scoundrel, and things like that—

SANSCULOTTE. What?

COUNTRYMAN. That's what you call me—

SANSCULOTTE. Blockhead! That's a different matter. All we French now are just citizens, d'you hear that? Neither more nor less!

COUNTRYMAN. And are we in our province just as good as you, and can we put in our say?

SANSCULOTTE. ‘Put in our say?’ D'you hear that, folk? The fellow is a federalist, a runaway Girondist! He's drivelling about the autonomy of the provinces!

The day of the Girondists is past and over. The sansculotte imagines that the countryman is thinking of the autonomy that was enjoyed by the provinces when they were in power.

WEIBER. Hängt ihn, hängt ihn! er ist ein Föderalist! (Man will ihn ergreifen.)

LANDMANN. (ängstlich schreiend) Scharwache! Polizei! Zu Hilfe!—Mörder! Räuber! Diebe! Zu Hilfe! (Einige lachen.)

WEIBER. Er nennt Sansculotten Räuber und Mörder! An die Laterne!

ALLGEMEINES GESCHREI. An die Laterne! (Man ergreift ihn.)

DER SANSCULOTTE. (dazwischen tretend) Einen Augenblick, Bürger! Keine blinde Wut!—Wenn man Septembermann gewesen, wie ich, so weiss man, wie das rechte Verfahren in solchen Dingen ist.—Höre, Schlingel!

LANDMANN. Was hab' ich denn verbrochen?

SANSCULOTTE. (würdevoll) Mit dieser Frage verteidigt sich kein französischer Bürger und Patriot. Ob Föderalist oder nicht, ich will dir beweisen, dass du zehnmal gehängt zu werden verdienst, auch wenn du der republikanischen Freiheit nie ein Haar gekrümmt haben solltest. Ich frage dich bloss: Was hast du getan für die Freiheit? Wie hast du dich kompromittiert für die Freiheit? Was hast du getan, um gehängt zu werden, wenn eine Reaktion.einträte und die Gemässigten ans Ruder kämen?

LANDMANN. Ich? O—wartet nur, ich besinne mich ja seht, es fällt mir etwas ein.—Ich fand einmal im Wald einen halbverhungerten Mann unter einem Haufen dürrer Streu versteckt—der machte mir solch jämmerlich flehende Zeichen (denn hören konnt' ich nur wenig von wegen der Taubheit) dass ich ihn mit nach Hause nahm, ihn labte und in aller Stille beherbergte. Als er abzog, vergass er in der Dachstube etliche zerknitterte Papiere, aus welchen ich ersah, dass es ein gar wichtiger Mann gewesen sein musste, einer von denen, die jetzt hier in Paris regieren—so einer aus eurem—wie heisst's doch gleich? hab' heute davon gehört—aus eurem Nationalkonvent.—Sah auch aus den Papieren, wie er hiess. Er hiess Bri—ha, es fällt mir schon ein, Brissot.?

(Grosse Sensation im Volke, dann wildes Geschrei: Verräter! Verräter! Schurke!)

SANSCULOTTE. Still!—(Zum LANDMANN) Unglückseliger! du hast das Haupt der dem Henker verfallenen Girondisten und Föderalisten, der Gemässigten, der heimlichen Volksverräter bei dir beherbergt!—Mensch, deine Sache ist eine verlorene. Dir ist nicht mehr zu helfen! Hängt ihn!

VOLK. An die Laterne!

ERSTER BÜRGER. Ach, lasst ihn doch! Ihr seht ja, dass er ein Dummkopf ist, und sechs Jahre lang ist er taub gewesen.

EINIGE STIMMEN. Was? der Gewürzkrämer verteidigt ihn? Auch ein Verräter!

ERSTER BÜRGER. Bin ich nicht ein guter Patriot? Hab' ich nicht kürzlich bei der grossen Hungersnot meinen Zuckervorrat pfundweise ans Volk verteilt, ohne Entgeld?

EIN FISCHWEIB. Du betrogst uns mit dem Gewicht! Als ich mein Pfund zu Hause nachwog, da fehlte dran ein halbes Lot!

WEIBER. Hängt sie alle beide!

EINER AUS DEM VOLKE. Hier vor dem Bücherladen des wackeren Patrioten Momoro!

(Man zerrt den Bauer gegen den Laternenpfahl, der vor Momoros Laden steht.)

MOMORO. (tritt aus der Tür, sein Käppchen, das er auf dem kahlen Kopfe trägt, lüftend) Guten Morgen, Sansculotten! Was belieben die freien Männer und edlen Bürger zu treiben hier vor meiner Tür?

---

WOMEN. Hang 'im, hang 'im! He's a federalist! (They make as if to setze him.)

COUNTRYMAN. (shouting in alarm) Watchman! Police! Help! Murder! Robbers! Thieves! Help! (Some laughter.)

WOMEN. He's calling sansculottes robbers and murderers! To the lamp-post!

GENERAL CRY. To the lamp-post! (He is seized.)

SANSCULOTTE. (stepping between them) One minute, citizens! No blind rage!—When one's been a September man, like me, one knows the right way to act in these matters.—Listen, Clown!

COUNTRYMAN. What have I done wrong?

SANSCULOTTE. (with dignity) No citizen and patriot of France stands up for his rights by asking that question. Whether you're federalist or not, prove to you that you deserve ten times over to be hanged, even if you've done nothing to hurt republican freedom. I simply ask what you've done for freedom? Have you euer compromised yourself for freedom? What have you done to risk hanging if reaction sets in and the moderates come to power?

COUNTRYMAN. I? Oh—Wait a bit, I'm calling to mind—yes, it's just coming back to me. Once in a wood I found a half-starved man under a heap of dry straw—he made such pitiful, beseeching signs to me, for I couldn't hear much on account of my deafness, that I took him home and gave him something to eat and kept him in hiding. When he went off he forgot some scraps of paper in the attic; from these I saw that he must have been a very important man, one of those who rule now here in Paris, one of those belonging to your—what d'you call it, I've heard the name today—to your National Convention—even saw from the papers what he called himself. His name was Bri—yes, it comes back to me, Brissot—

(Great Sensation among the people, then a wild shout: Traitor, traitor, villain!)

SANSCULOTTE. Silence!—(To the COUNTRYMAN) Wretched man! You sheltered the chief of the Girondists and federalists who have fallen to the hangman, chief of the moderates, of the secret betrayers of the people!—Man, it's all up with you. Nothing can help you now! Take him and hang him!

PEOPLE. To the lamp-post!

FIRST CITIZEN. Oh, leave him alone. See what a blockhead he is, and he's been deaf for six years—

VOICES IN THE CROWD. What? The grocer sticks up for him? He's a traitor too!

FIRST CITIZEN. I'm not a good patriot, then? Didn't I, a short time ago, during the great famine, divide up all my sugar and give it to the people by the pound, and that gratis ?

FISHWIFE. You didn't give us fair weight! When I got home it was live grammes short!

WOMEN. Hang both of them!

A VOICE FROM THE CROWD. Here, in front of the bookshop of the honest patriot Momoro!

(The peasant is dragged towards the lamp-post in front of Momoro's shop.)

MOMORO. (comes out of the door, raising the Linie cap that covers his bald head) Good morrow, Sansculottes! What does it please our free men and noble citizens to do here in front of my door?

Momoro is a citizen too, and moreover, as we shall see, a man of some importance who stands with the whole force of his personality right in the immediate moment of the revolution. He is, however, at the same time, beginning to feel that the ground under his feet is getting a bit shaky.

Fresh people now come forward and prepare the way for a new mood, the mood that I characterised as reminiscent of sounding brass. We are, in fact, at the moment when loyalty to Danton is passing away, in favour of loyalty to Robespierre. We must accordingly watch for die transition from the a—o mood to the e—a mood. Loyalty to Robespierre is quietly stealing in, and that fact must find expression in the whole mood of the scene from now on.

EINER AUS DEM VOLK. Guten Morgen, Bürger Momoro. Wir hängen einen Föderalisten, einen Girondistenknecht—

MOMORO. Gerade hier vor eines Patrioten Tür? Lasst das bleiben, ehrenwerte Bürger der Republik! Wozu haben wir denn das Revolutionstribunal, das ja ohnedies im ganzen wenig zu wünschen und zu hängen übrig lässt? Und überhaupt, tut mir den Gefallen, hängt keinen, bevor er die neuesten Broschüren gelesen hat, die in meinem Buchladen soeben erschienen. Wenn ihr einen solchen Menschen tötet, so verfault der Kerl unnütz unter der Erde und labt höchstens die Würmer. Wenn ihr ihm aber Zeit lasst, die neuesten Broschüren zu lesen, so könnt ihr den widerhaarigsten Aristokraten in einen feuerspeienden Patrioten verwandeln, der hingeht und sich mit Freudentränen in den Augen jeden Augenblick für die Republik totschlagen lässt. Ich frage: was ist besser?—Da seht einmal (er weist einen Pack Flugblätter und Broschüren vor): ‘Neueste Trauerrede auf den Tod des göttlichen Marat’—‘Laternenpfahl und Guillotine; fliegende Blätter für Freiheit, Gleichheit und allgemeine Menschenliebe’—‘Neuer und unfehlbarer Plan, royalistische Städte binnen drei Tagen mit Nelkenöl in die Luft zu sprengen’—

ONE OF THE PEOPLE. Good morrow, Citizen Momoro. We're hanging a federalist, a Girondist?

---

MOMORO. What? Just here at the door of a patriot? Wait a bit, honourable citizens of the Republic. What is the Revolutionary Tribunal for, which on the whole leaves us very little to wish for and very few people to hang? At least do me the favour not to hang anyone till he has read the latest pamphlet that has just appeared in my shop. When you kill a man of this sort the fellow rots uselessly in the ground and at best feeds the worms. But when you give him time to read the latest pamphlet, you may change the most cross-grained aristocrat into a fire-spitting patriot who goes off ready to die at any moment for the Republic. I ask you, which is the better? Just look (he points to a pile of broadsheets and pamphlets): ‘Latest Funeral Oration on the Death of the Godlike Marat’—‘Lamp-post and Guillotine'; leaflets on liberty, equality and universal human love.’ New and infallible Plan to blow up Royalist Towns with Oil of Cloves’?

Momoro talks the most naturally of them all, and helps to lead over to the new phase of the revolution. He is, at the moment, in high esteem, and this must be apparent to the audience.

VOLK. Hoch Momoro, der Patriot!

MOMORO. Es lebe die Republik!—Alles für wenige Sous!(Viele drängen sich herbei, die Blätter zu kaufen.)

SANSCULOTTE. Du verkaufst deine Scharteken zu teuer, Bürger Momoro!

MOMORO. Keinen Sou verdien' ich dran. Ihr kennt mich!

IN ZEITUNGSAUSRUFER. Der ‘Vater Duchêsne’! Der ‘Vater Duchêsne' von heute! Zwei Sous das Blatt!—Er ist verzweifelt wild heute, der Vater Duchêsne!—Kauft das Journal des gefeierten Patrioten Hebert!—in 30 000 Exemplaren verbreitet! Er ist verzweifelt wild heute, der Vater Duchêsne!—

MOMORO. (nachspottend) ‘Er ist verzweifelt wild heute der Vater Duchêsne!’ So ruft er alle Tage. 30 000 Exemplare? Allen Respekt vor dem Bürger Hebert, aber ich habe mir sagen lassen, dass ganze Stösse seines Journals gratis in die Gasthöfe wandern—für die ‘Bedürfnisse’ der Reisenden! hahaha! für die ‘Bedürfnisse’ der Reisenden!—Das Gediegenste, was aus den Federn der Patrioten fliesst, findet man doch immer noch bei Momoro. In meinem Hinterstübchen haben schon unter dem Königtum die radikalsten Männer Klub gehalten und halten da noch Klub heutigen Tages.—

ZEITUNGSAUSRUFER. (spottend) Ja, Graukopf, sie halten Klub bei deinem jungen Weibchen.

MOMORO. Tropf! sie bringen ihr den neuen republikanischen Kalender bei, der den Weibern so schwer in den Kopf will. Und mehr! noch mehr! 0, die Patrioten wissen den alten Momoro zu schätzen, und um ihn zu ehren, haben sie, müsst ihr wissen, keine andere als eben sein Weibchen zur Göttin der Vernunft erkoren. Schon am frühen Morgen ist sie heut' abgeholt worden auf das Stadthaus, damit man für das Fest sie würdig herausputze. Nun ihr werdet sehen! Auf diesem selben Platze wird sie prangen.

ZEITUNGSAUSRUFER. Und dir werden zur Feier des Tages die Hörner vergoldet?

VOLK. Es lebe Momoro und sein Weibchen!

MOMORO. (zu einem Manne, der ein Plakat an die Mauer klebt) Mensch, du klebst ja dein Plakat hier über ein anderes.

DER MANN. Ach, das alte ist ein gemässigtes; das da aber ist von der Kommune.—

VOLK. (das sich indes immer zahlreicher gesammelt) Von der Kommune? lasst doch sehen!

EINER AUS DEM VOLKE. (lesend) ‘Hebert und Chaumette laden das souveräne Volk zum heutigen Feste der Vernunft, das denkwürdig bleiben wird für alle Zeiten!’—

VOLK. Hoch Hebert! Hoch Chaumette! Hoch die Republik! Ça ira! (Die Weiber tanzen)

EIN STELZFUSS. (im Gedränge) Heissa! springt und brüllt, wie ihr wollt, aber tretet einem verdienten Krieger der Republik sein hölzernes Bein nicht weg!

---

PEOPLE. Cheers for Momoro the patriot!

MOMORO. Long live the Republic! Any one of these for a few sous!

(Many of the crowd press round him to buy the leaflets.)

SANSCULOTTE. You sell your trash too dear, Citizen Momoro!

MOMORO. Why, I don't make a sou on them. You know me!

NEWSPAPER-VENDOR. ‘Father Duchêsne’! ‘Father Duchêsne’ ! today's ‘Father Duchêsne’! He's desperately savage today is Father Duchêsne! Buy the paper of the good old patriot Hebert! 30,000 copies given out! He's desperately savage today is Father Duchêsne!—

MOMORO. (ridiculing him) ‘He's desperately savage today is Father Duchêsne.’ That's what he calls out all day. 30,000 copies? With all due respect to Citizen Hebert I venture to say that whole stacks of his paper find their way into the inns gratis—‘For the requirements of travellers’ ! Ha! Ha! Ha! ‘For the requirements of travellers’!—What is of value from the pens of the patriots is still always to be found at Momoro's. In my room behind the shop, even under the King, all the most radical men used to meet, still meet today?

NEWSPAPER-VENDOR. (mockingly) Yes, old fellow, the club meets where your young wife is.

MOMORO. Booby! They explain to her the recent Republican Calendar which takes so long to get into the head of a woman! What's more, what's more—Oh, the patriots know how to appreciate old Momoro, and how to do him honour; you must know they have chosen no one else but his little wife to be the Goddess of Reason. today, quite early, she was taken to the Town Hall to be all properly decked out for the festival. You'll see. She'll be on show in this very square.

NEWSPAPER-VENDOR. And will your horns be gilded for the occasion?

PEOPLE. Long live Momoro and his little wife!

MOMORO. (to a man sticking a placard on the wall) Hi, you, you're sticking that on top of another—

THE MAN. Oh, that old thing is one of those moderates, but this, here, comes from the Commune—

PEOPLE. (gathering round in their numbers) From the Commune, let's see!

ONE OF THE PEOPLE. (reading aloud) ‘Hebert and Chaumette invite the sovereign people today to the Festival of Reason which will remain in memory for all time!’

PEOPLE. Cheers for Hebert! Cheers for Chaumette! Cheers for the Republic! Ça ira! (The women dance.)

MAN WITH WOODEN LEG. (among the crowd) Hurray! Jump and shout as much as you like but don't stamp off the wooden leg of a deserving soldier of the Republic!

For at this point, in order to show how the mood is changing, moving all the time in the direction of the note that has been sounded by Robespierre, a new speaker steps forward from among the crowd, who is under a certain disability—a man with a wooden leg. The crowd, we shall find, is gradually working its way free of the completely different mood that has hitherto prevailed and beginning to enter into the mood that is connected with Robespierre. The i (ee) mood that belongs to him, begins to be heard.

SANSCULOTTE. (auf ihn zugehend) Was seh' ich? Battiste, du wieder in Paris? Verflucht—dein Bein

STELZFUSS. Hainbuchenes Kernholz—

SANSCULOTTE. Brav gefochten für die Republik? Nicht Tod noch Teufel gefürchtet ? Nie in Gefangenschaft geraten?

STELZFUSS. Bin ein einziges Mal von feindlichen Reitern allein überfallen worden, and da waren ihrer bloss vier—

SANSCULOTTE. Viele Strapazen ausgestanden?

STELZFUSS. Donnerwetter! Ihr habt es leicht, hier im warmen Paris als Ohnehosen herumzulaufen: aber im Feld kampieren und auf Vorposten stehen, ohne Schuh', in einer Kälte, bei welcher die Kinder im Mutterleibe erfrieren, so dass wir Schiesspulver in den Branntwein tun mussten, um uns den Magen zu erwärmen? Dann wieder tagelang fechten in der Sonnenglut—

SANSCULOTTE. Ach, was schadet das dem Krieger im Eifer des Gefechts?

STELZFUSS. Natürlich, wenn dir eine Kanonenkugel den Kopf wegreisst, so stirbst du nicht am Sonnenstich—

EINER AUS DEM VOLKE. Bist du nicht der, den sie als jungen Burschen den kleinen Barbier nannten—Gehilfe beim Barbier Flatte in der Strasse Pompadour?

STELZFUSS.
Der bin ich und habe mein Handwerk nicht verlernt—
Zu Lille, wenn eine Bombe niederflog
und vor mir platzte, griff ich eine Scherbe
vom Boden auf, gebrauchte sie als Schüssel
mit Seif' und Wasser und rasierte dann
so zwanzig Kameraden auf dem Fleck.
Ei, das gefiel euch wohl hier in Paris,
wenn die Armee mit den geschwungenen Fahnen
wegwedelte von Frankreichs Leib des Auslands
Schmeissfliegenschwarm, der zahllos ihn umschwirrt—
Wenn ihr vernahmt, dass wir so Sieg auf Sieg
erfochten, dachtet ihr da hinterm Ofen
wohl auch daran, wie oft wir barfuss liefen
und nichts zu beissen hatten als Patronen,
und oft nicht einmal die?

SANSCULOTTE. Was? lassen nicht die Weiber von Paris ihre Männer zerrissen laufen, um Zelttücher und Uniformen für euch zu nähen? Behelfen wir uns nicht statt der klingenden Münze mit lumpigen wertlosen Assignaten? Was? Wir nicht an euch gedacht? Und sind wir etwa müssig gewesen, indess ihr im Felde standet? In den Septembertagen hättest du hier sein sollen?

STELZFUSS. Kann mir's denken—erinnere mich noch recht gut, wie du vor drei Jahren einmal bei einem Volksfeste dem Pferde des Generals Lafayette, ohne dass es der General merkte, den Schweif an einen Laternenpfahl bandest, weil die Stute damit immer dir und anderen, die hinter dir standen, ins Gesicht flunkerte?

SANSCULOTTE. Possen! Aber in den Septembertagen...

STELZFUSS. Ist es denn wahr, dass ihr in diesen Septembertagen zuletzt auch die sämtlichen seltenen Tiere in der Menagerie von Versailles habt über die Klinge springen lassen?

SANSCULOTTE. Was? Die sämtlichen seltenen Tiere? Nein, nur die Löwen und Adler, weil das die Könige der Tiere sind, und dann was die sogenannten Wappentiere sind, wie sie die Aristokraten in ihren Wappen hatten?

STELZFUSS. Teufelskerle! Wie kam euch denn das so auf einmal?

SANSCULOTTE. Weiss nicht. Auf einmal, sagst du? Gar nicht auf einmal Es kam so nach und nach, wie der Appetit mit dem Essen?

STELZFUSS. Was sagten denn die Gemässigten?

SANSCULOTTE. Kein Wort. Hinter den Sansculotten stand die Kommune, und diese selber deckte der breite Rücken Dantons, der sich damals eben zum erstenmal aufgerichtet hatte als ein brüllender Leu. Gegen den waren die anderen nur ein Rudel bissiger Hunde. Jetzt ist er träg geworden und überhaupt, wie alles grosse Getier, nicht so beständig munter und beisslustig wie die kleineren Kläffer—

EINER AUS DEM VOLK. Ah, diesem Simson haben's auch die Weiber angetan?

SANSCULOTTE.
Ja, ja, doch sag ich euch,
steht der noch einmal auf, so lang er ist,
stösst er die Decke durch und reisst die Säulen
im Tempel um, grad' wie der Simson auch—

EIN ANDERER. Ach was, der steht nicht wieder auf. Den hat der andre unter’sich gebracht. Und dieser andre ist schlau?

STELZFUSS. Wer?

SANSCULOTTE. Ei wer? Hast du von Robespierre im Lager nicht gehört?

STELZFUSS. Robespierre? Robespierre? Ist das das kleine steife Männchen, das man spottweise das’ Talglicht von Arras’ nennt, weil er von Arras kam und gern glänzen wollte, aber nicht heller flackerte als eine Talgkerze? Sie lachten ihn immer aus, wenn er in der Nationalversammlung sprechen wollte.

SANSCULOTTE. Das war damals. Der führt jetzt im Nationalkonvent, im Wohlfahrtsausschuss, im Jacobinerklub das grosse Wort.

STELZFUSS. Ich sah ihn einmal—nur von fern. Trägt er nicht Brillen?

SANSCULOTTE. Nein.

STELZFUSS. Es kam mir doch so vor.

SANSCULOTTE. Er hat ein gelbes Gesicht und bläulich- gräuliche Ränder um die Augen—die wirst du in deiner Einfalt aus der Entfernung für Brillen gehalten haben?

STELZFUSS. Bleich im Gesicht?

SANSCULOTTE.
Gelb—grau—nein, eigentlich—wie soll ich sagen?
Graugrün, wenn man's genau nimmt—tiefe Augen
und widerhaar'ge Braun—ein schlichtes Männchen;
nichts gegen Danton! Aber wenn vor dir
hier Danton steht, der mächtige Koloss,
und dort das schneid'ge Männchen Robespierre
sprichst du mit dem frei von der Leber weg
wie mit dem jovialsten Kameraden,
und vor dem andern stockt die Rede dir
im Schlund—nicht grad' als ob er dich so dreist
ansäh', im Gegenteil, sieht eher etwas schüchtern
und unbehilflich aus vor vielem Volk—
doch geh' nur einmal auf die Galerie
des Nationalkonvents, sobald er spricht:
da kennst du ihn nicht mehr. Wenn festen Schritts
er steigt zur Rednerbühne, wird's so still,
dass du die Mäuschen pfeifen hören kannst
in ihren Löchern. Steht er anfangs dann
aufrecht und ruhig droben wie ein Pfahl
und spricht gelassen, denkst du: nun, er spricht nur eben
wie ein Schulmeister, oder wie ein Pfaff
spricht auf der Kanzel—plötzlich aber wirft
er ein paar Worte hin mit einer Stimme,
so kalt und scharf wie Stahl—in einem Ton,
dass dir ein Schauer über'n Rücken läuft-
Und fängt dann gar der Winkel seines Mundes
zu zucken an, und ruft er bittersüss
in seiner scharfen, schneidigen Manier:
‘Du armes Volk!’ und’ Tugendhaftes Volk!’
da packt dich was im Herzen wie ein Krampf:
du legst die Hand ans Messer, wenn du eins
verbirgst an deiner Brust, und möchtest gern
dich vor ihm niederwerfen und ihn fragen,
wen du zuerst von den verfluchten Feinden
der Republik damit durchstossen sollst—
Zuweilen aber schweigt er wochenlang
und lässt die anderen reden. Es geschehe
viel Dinge noch, von welchen man nicht weiss,
ob sie ihm lieb sind oder leid. Zuweilen
laviert er bloss und wartet auf den Wind.

Eben in letzter Zeit ist er wieder sehr schweigsam geworden?

---

SANSCULOTTE. (going up to him) What? You, Battiste, back in Paris? Damn it all—your leg—

WOODEN LEG. The prime cut of a hornbeams

SANSCULOTTE. Well fought for the Republic? No fear of death or the devil and never taken prisoner?

WOODEN LEG. Only once, fallen upon by enemy cavalry and then they were four to?

SANSCULOTTE. Stood up to plenty of hardship?

WOODEN LEG. By Jupiter! You've an easy time here in warm Paris, running around as sansculottes; but to camp out in the fields and to be on outpost duty without shoes in a cold that's enough to freeze a baby in its mother's womb, so that we had to put gunpowder in our brandy to warm up our stomachs? Then the whole day long to fight in the blaze of the sun?

SANSCULOTTE. Oh! What does that matter to anyone in the heat of the battle?

WOODEN LEG. Naturally if a cannonball takes off your head you can't be said to die of sunstroke—

ONE OF THE PEOPLE. Are you the one they used to call the little barber when you were a bit of a thing—used to help Barber Hatte in Pompadour Street?

WOODEN LEG. That's me, and I've never forgotten my trade—
Once when a bomb came down at Lille and burst
In front of me I seized a fragment up
From off the ground and used it as a dish,
And then with soap and water, on the spot,
Gave a good shave to twenty of our lads.
Ha, this pleased you all right well in Paris here
When our brave army with its colours flying
Swept from our France the dirty foreign flies
Which in a countless swarm did buzz around.
When you did hear of all the victories
That we were gaining, from beside your stoves
Had you a thought how often with bare feet
We went about and nothing had to eat
But cartridges—not even those at times?

SANSCULOTTE. What? Don't the wives of Paris let their men go in rags while they stitch at tent-cloths and uniforms for you? Don't we have to put up with dirty, worthless paper in place of ringing coins? What? We don't think about you? And are we idle when you're fighting? You should have been here in the September days—

WOODEN LEG. I can imagine—I remember quite well how three years ago on a people's holiday, without the General noticing it, you bound the tail of Lafayette's mare to the lamp-post because it cavorted about in your very faces?

SANSCULOTTE. Buffoonery! But in those September days...

WOODEN LEG. Is it true then that in those September days you put to death the whole collection of rare animals in the menagerie at Versailles?

SANSCULOTTE. What? The whole menagerie? No, only the lions and eagles because they are the kings among the animals; besides they're what are in the so-called coats-of-arms that aristocrats used to bear.

WOODEN LEG. You devils! How did that suddenly come into your heads?

SANSCULOTTE. I don't know. Suddenly, did you say? It wasn't a bit sudden. It came gradually—like appetite comes with eating—

WOODEN LEG. What said the moderates?

SANSCULOTTE. Not a word. The Commune is behind the sansculottes, and that's protected by Danton's broad back, and just at that time he was beginning to roar like a lion. Compared with him the others were only a pack of biting dogs. He's become lazy nowadays and like all the great beasts not always so full of vigour and lust for using his teeth as the small curs are—

ONE OF THE PEOPLE. Ah! This Samson too has been bewitched by the women!

SANSCULOTTE. Yes, yes, but I would have you know
When upright he does stand he is so tall
He'd push the ceiling through, break down the pillars,
Just as did once your Samson in the temple—

ANOTHER. Oh well! He no longer stands at his full height. He's under the other now, and this other is crafty—

WOODEN LEG. Who?

SANSCULOTTE. Who Haven't you heard of Robespierre in your camp ?

WOODEN LEG. Robespierre? Robespierre? Is that the stiff little man they call in fun the ‘tallow candle of Arras' because he came from Arras and wanted to shine but gave no more light than a flickering tallow candle? They laughed him out of court when he wanted to speak in the National Assembly.

SANSCULOTTE. That was in those days. He leads now in the debates in the National Convention or in the Committee of Public Safety—in the Jacobin Club too.

WOODEN LEG. I saw him once—only from a distance. Doesn't he wear spectacles?

SANSCULOTTE. No.

WOODEN LEG. It looked as if he did.

SANSCULOTTE. He has a yellow face and a blue-grey rim round his eyes, which you in your ignorance may at a distance have taken for spectacles—

WOODEN LEG. Pasty-faced?

SANSCULOTTE. Yellow—grey—no indeed, what shall I say?
Grey-green, to be exact, with deep-set eyes
And stubborn brow—a simple, little
man, Nothing compared with Danton! But if here
That great Colossus Danton were to stand
And there the little sharp-edged Robespierre,
With Danton one could speak out at one's ease
As with the friendliest among one's mates,
But with the other all your talk would be
Stuck in your throat; not that he's arrogant,
Quite on the contrary for he seems shy
And at a loss before a lot of folk—
But hear him at the National Convention!
You will not know him; when with a firm step
He goes up to the rostrum, all's so still
That you can hear the piping of the mice
Inside their holes. He to begin with stands
Upright and cool above us like a pillar
And speaks so calm, you think: well, now he talks
Just like a schoolmaster, or like a priest
Talks in a pulpit—then, quite suddenly
He hurls out a few words, but with a voice
As cold and sharp as steel, and in a tone
That sends a shudder running down your back;
And then the corner of his mouth begins
To twitch and he cries' out, so bittersweet,
In that sharp way so full of energy,
‘O you poor folk’ and ‘O you virtuous folk!’
And something seizes on your heart like cramp,
And if you have a knife concealed about you
You grasp it firmly, with the strong desire
To throw yourself before him and to ask
Which, to begin with, of the cursed foes
Of the Republic you should plunge it in.
But sometimes he is silent weeks on end
Letting the others speak. Many things occur
Of which one does not know whether they please
Or do not please him. Then too there are times
When he just tacks and waits upon the wind.
He's been quite silent recently again—

Note the skilful way in which the personality of Robespierre is introduced. The sansculotte abandons his role as sansculotte, and suddenly shows himself as a marvellous portrayer of character. If this moment in the scene is rendered with the colouring that it has been my intention to give to it in my reading, then in this speech that the sansculotte addresses to the people around him, the audience will eel the swing-over of loyalty of which we have spoken. The critical moment of transition has come; and as we go on, I shall indicate here and there some of the points that it would be important for a producer to have in mind The second mood is now upon us, it overwhelms the scene as though with a confused and deafening noise; I compared it, you will remember, to the clash of sounding brass.

EIN SCHREIBER DER KOMMUNE. (erscheint mit Handlangern, die Bretter und Handwerksgeräte mit sich tragen) Platz da! Platz, Sansculotten! Das Gerüst für die Göttin der Vernunft und für die Redner wird aufgeschlagen! Der Festzug wird in kurzer Zeit da sein.

---

CLERK TO THE COMMUNE. (appears with workmen carrying planks and tools) Make way there; make way, sansculottes. The stand is to be put up for the Goddess of Reason and the orators. The procession will shortly be here.

Here we have the ö (French eu in ‘feu’) mood. It has to be spoken forward; we must let the speaking strike on to the front part of the palate.

VOLK. Ça ira! Es lebe die Göttin der Vernunft!

SCHREIBER. (zu den Handlangern) Hierher, ihr Leute! in der Mitte des Platzes! Notre-Dame gerade gegenüber! (Die Handlanger machen sich an die Arbeit.)

---

PEOPLE. Ça ira. Long live the Goddess of Reason!

CLERK. (to his men) Here, you people! In the middle of the square! Over there by Notre Dame! (The men set to work.)

From now on, the women speak more in the ei (as in ‘height’) mood. With the entry of Robespierre into the conversation, the revolutionary impulses begin to be imbued with a sort of coy and affectionate enthusiasm—e a.

EIN WEIB. Seht nur, dass es nicht wieder so geht, wie im vorigen Jahre bei dem grossen Feste, wo sich ein paar Kerle unter den Brettergrund des Gerüstes versteckten—vermutlich um die Männer und Frauen, die darauf standen, in die Luft zu sprengen, bis man sie entdeckte, hervorzog und totschlug—

DER SCHREIBER. (schäkernd) Ach, das waren bloss ein paar Verehrer eures Geschlechts, die durch die Ritzen herauf- blinzelten... Was läge daran, wenn man heute der Vernunft ein wenig nach den Waden guckte? Sein Augenmerk auf die Vernunft und all ihr Detail zu richten, ist ja fortan Bürgerpflicht!

WEIBER. (ihn umringend) Du Schelm!—Werden sie bald da sein?

SCHREIBER. Sogleich.

WEIBER. Heissa, gleich werden sie da sein! Es lebe Hebert und Chaumette! Es lebe die Kommune! Es lebe der Konvent! Es lebe Danton! Es lebe Robespierre!

A WOMAN. Look to it that what happened last year at the great fête doesn't happen again, when a few fellows hid underneath the platform—as it was thought, to blow up the men and women on it—till they were discovered and pulled out and killed—

---

CLERK. (waggishly) Aha! They were simply one or two worshippers of your fair sex squinting through the crevices. ... What of it if today, too, someone has a peep at the Goddess of Reason's legs? To make Reason in all her details his aim, is henceforth one of the obligations of a citizen!

WOMEN. (pressing round him) You rogue! Will they soon be here?

CLERK. They're just coming.

WOMEN. Hurray! They're just coming! Long live Hebert and Chaumette! Long live the Commune! Long live the Convention! Long live Danton! Long live Robespierre!

(Translated by V. E. W.)

I wanted to show you by practical example how a scene like this should be treated. I have laid on the colouring a little more strongly than would be necessary in a performance, because I wanted you to have a particularly clear picture of how the different moods come severally to expression in the treatment of sound. We saw, for example, that the countryman has to be spoken throughout with the mouth open, for he is to reveal the a mood; a slight intoning of a should even be audible in every sound he utters. Similarly, you will find the clerk has to speak so that something of an i enters into each one of his sounds. His voice is always in front of that i-boundary in the mouth, of which I was speaking the other day, and is continually striking the front part of the palate. It is by paying careful attention to details like this, that we can gradually learn to give form and style to our speaking on the stage.

We saw yesterday that the Gospel of John contains something that can only be experienced on higher levels of consciousness. Before such experiences are possible, the human being must first develop higher.

The human being is a developing creature. We can observe this from subordinate to ever higher states. This is already shown by the difference between a savage and a civilized European, or between an ordinary person and a genius like Schiller, Goethe or Francis of Assisi. An unlimited potential for development is open to every human being. To understand this, let us take up yesterday's lecture and use a diagram to clarify the theosophical basic teachings on the development of the human being:

During the following explanations, the diagram below will be drawn on the “board, starting from the bottom left.

We have thus seen that man has his physical body in common with all inanimate beings, the etheric body with all plants in our physical world, and the astral body with all animal creatures in his environment. We then saw that man, in terms of his development, differs from all other beings in that he can say “I” to himself.

The “I” is by no means a simple entity. On closer inspection, it is also something that is structured. The animal feels, has desire and passion, the plant does not; the animal because it already possesses an astral body. In this, the I develops in man. But this I has been at work long before man became clearly aware of it. A look at the development of humanity teaches us more about this.

The earth has not always been as it is today. Its face has repeatedly changed; the present continents have not always been there. During the penultimate earth period, a continent called Atlantis was located where the Atlantic Ocean now rages. Traces of it and the story of its downfall have been preserved in ancient legends. In the Bible, the Flood is meant by this. The ancient fathers of a different nature, whose descendants we are, experienced this. In this old Atlantis, the air and water conditions were quite different from what they are now. The whole thing was shrouded in a dense fog. In the words Nebelheim, Niflheim, we still have a hint of this. There was no rain and no sunshine; instead of rain, only fog currents; instead of sun, only diffuse illumination. Only after long periods did the fog condense as water. The sun only penetrated a little, like a faint premonition, through the constant fog. In such an environment, people also lived a completely different mental and spiritual life than today. It was only towards the end of the Atlantic period, roughly in the area of present-day Ireland, that people began to show self-awareness for the first time, and to think clearly and logically. In the mists there was no possibility of distinguishing objects as we do today. Man only develops a consciousness like ours in relation to his surroundings. As the objects emerged from the mists, so did the physical eye; and in the same measure the consciousness soul developed, and within it the self-aware ego. Even then, man could speak.

If we go back even further to the earliest times of Atlantis, we find that man looked significantly different. He had no external vision at that time, but a different way of perceiving, in images. To understand this state of consciousness, imagine a very vivid dream that reflects something of your surroundings. The following “dream” may serve as an example. A student dreams that he is standing at the door of the lecture hall, and another student deliberately brushes against him, which is a serious offense that can only be atoned for by a duel. He challenges him, they drive into the forest, the duel begins, the first shot rings out. Then our student wakes up – he has pushed over the chair next to his bed. Had he been awake, he would have noticed that a chair had fallen over. But because his consciousness soul had descended into sleep, he perceived with a deeper, less developed soul power. The dramatic action of the dream is a pictorial transformation of an external process.

The processes of consciousness in the ancient Atlanteans were similar. Although the images were more regulated and ordered, they did not have a clear perception of their surroundings. The life of feeling expressed itself quite characteristically in fine perceptions of touch and color. If the early Atlantean perceived a warm mist that symbolized itself to him in red, he knew that something pleasant was approaching him. Or if he encountered another person who was unpleasant to him, this was also indicated to him by a very specific sensation that became an image, an ugly color tone. But warmth, for example, was symbolized to him in a beautiful red cloud. This happened in many degrees and variations. The early Atlanteans thus had visual perceptions. We only have such perceptions in the case of pain, which is obviously only within us, however much it is caused by the outside world and can become loud. Our pain is also experienced inwardly, spiritually, and is thus truer than the external facts.

The Atlanteans, however, already developed ordered ideas. Not so the Lemurians. The Atlantean period was preceded by the Lemurian period. Man was not yet able to express language. He was merely able to internalize what the animal also feels. Thus, what we call the sentient soul developed in him. The continent of Lemuria, which was destroyed by the forces of fire, we have to imagine between Africa, Australia and Asia.

But now back to our scheme: IIIa sentient soul, IIIb intellectual soul, IIIc consciousness soul are all three transformations, ennobled transformations from the astral body. It is only towards the end of the Atlantean period that man becomes capable of consciously working on himself. What does he do now?

Up to now, cosmic forces have lifted man up in his development. Now man begins to consciously take his development into his own hands, to work on himself, to educate himself. On which body does he now begin his work? It is important to pay strict attention to the sequence here. First, man was and is able to work on and in his astral body. And on this level of ability, the human being of the present day is still standing today. In general, we can say of today's human being: He uses his experiences and experiences to transform his astral body. Later we will see that a higher level of development consists of working into the lower bodies. Let us first stay with the first: with the ability to transform the astral body.

To do this, let us compare the civilized man with the savage. The savage first follows his instincts, desires and passions, every craving, without restraint. But then he can begin to work on his self. To certain instincts he says: remain; to others: leave. Thus, for example, the man-eater ceases his habit of eating his own kind; in so doing, he leaves a certain stage of civilization and becomes another. Or he learns to act logically, learns, for example, to plow. Thus his astral body becomes more and more structured. Formerly external powers determined man, now he does it himself. The astral body of a Hottentot circles in wild dark red vortices, in a person like Schiller in bright green and yellow, in Franz of Assisi in wonderful blue. This is how the astral body is worked on. That which is consciously worked into the astral body from the I is called the spirit self or manas. With the conscious working in of the I, something very special begins. Before that, however, before one comes to the formation of this manas, that part which the animal also has remains completely unchanged in the astral body. Despite the growth of intellect, the astral body can remain essentially unchanged, full of animal desires. But there are influences that do transform the sentient body: conscious religiosity and art. From these we draw strength to overcome and ennoble ourselves, which is a much stronger power than mere morality. Man has as much of the spirit or Manas as he has worked into his astral body. This is not something external, it is a transformation product of what used to be the sentient soul.

As long as I am merely working on my sentient body, I use my achievements to transform this my astral body. All the morality in the world cannot achieve more, nor can all intellectuality. But if true religiousness is at work in me, this stronger power expresses itself through the astral body and works its way into the next lower one, the etheric body. This is naturally a much greater achievement than when the ego merely works with the astral, because the raw material of the etheric body is much coarser and more resistant than the finer astral body. We call the result of this transformation the spirit of life or Budhi. The spirit of life is thus the spiritualized life body. In the Orient, someone who had brought it to the highest level was called a Buddha. This tremendous moral power proceeds from consciousness when the three souls are governed by a strong ego. These are preparatory steps for humanity in general. Only the chela works consciously in his etheric body. The chela aims to spiritualize everything, even into his etheric body. The chelaship is concluded when he has allowed Budhi to stream completely into his life body, so that the life body, which he ennobles from the I, has become a life spirit.

In the third stage, man reaches the highest principle that is currently accessible to us. He is able to work down to his physical body. In doing so, he rises above the level of the chela and becomes a “master”. When, on the second step, Budhi glows through his etheric body, the human being gains control not only of moral principles but also of his character. He can change his temperament, his memory, and his habits. Today's human being has only a very imperfect command of all these. To understand the task of the chela, compare yourself as you are now with yourself when you were ten years old. How much knowledge have you gained since then, and how little your character has changed! The content of the soul has changed quite radically, but the habits and inclinations only very slightly. Those who were hot-tempered, forgetful, envious, inattentive as a child are often still so as adults. How much our ideas and thoughts have changed, how little our habits! This gives you a clue to estimate how much tougher, firmer, more difficult to shape the etheric body is compared to the astral body. Conversely, how much more fruitful and consequential an improvement achieved in the etheric body!

The following sentence can be used as an example of the different speeds at which transformation is possible: What you have learned and experienced has changed like the minute hand of the clock, your habits like the hour hand. Learning is easy, unlearning is difficult. You can still recognize yourself from the writing of yesteryear, because that is also a habit. It is easy to change views and insights, but difficult to change habits. Changing this tenacious thing, habit, little by little, is the task of the chela. This means becoming a different person by creating a different etheric body, thus transforming the life body into the life spirit. This puts the forces of growth in your hands. Habits are among the manifest growth forces. If I destroy them, the vis vitalis, the power of growth, is released and placed at my disposal, to direct my consciousness. Christ says: “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Christ is the personification of the power that changes the life body.

Now to the third stage. There is something that is even more difficult to bring under the control of free will than our habits and emotional stirrings: the physical body in its animal and vegetative, mechanical or reflexive dependency. There is a stage of human development in which no nerve is activated, no blood corpuscle rolls without the human being's conscious will. This self-transformation reaches into conditions and states that were fixed long, long before Atlantis and Lemuria, and are therefore the hardest to reverse: into cosmic primeval states. In this work, man develops Atman, the spiritual man. The potential for this is present in every human being today. This whole cycle depends on the attainment of fully clear self-awareness.

The most powerful and potent laws are those of the breathing process. The entire spiritual being depends on lung breathing, because it is the outer expression of the gradual drawing in of the I. In ancient Atlantis, this potential emerged through the saying of the I. In Lemuria, man did not breathe through lungs, but through gill-like organs. Nor did he walk as we do today, but floated or swam in a more fluid element, where water and air were not yet separated. To maintain his balance, he had an organ analogous to the swim bladder of a fish. As the air gradually separated, the swim bladder was transformed into our present lungs. The development of the sense of self runs parallel to the development of the lungs. This is still expressed in the words: “And God breathed into the man his breath of life, and he became a living soul.” Atman means nothing other than “breath”. The regulation of the breath is therefore one of the most powerful tools in the work of yoga, which teaches the control of all bodily functions. Here we look into a future in which human beings will have transformed themselves from within.

Conscious work in the etheric body is therefore a mastery.

Conscious work in the physical body: mastery.

The human being perceives the growth into these two stages as an opening up of new worlds, new environments, comparable only to the feelings of the child when it emerges from the dark, warm womb into the cold, light world at birth. The moment of generating Budhi is called second birth, rebirth, awakening in all mysteries. As man formerly left an inner world, of which only echoes remain in dreams, so he enters a new world as one awakened to the same world on a higher level. In those ancient times, man perceived the world with the help of his own inner images. On the future level of higher clairvoyance, man steps out of himself and sees behind the essence of things; he sees their souls. It is a kind of clairvoyance that is directed outwards and highlights the 'inherent essence' of things. The seer penetrates, for example, below the surface of the plant or stone. This outward-directed clairvoyance, with full mental alertness, not only illuminates the very basis of his own soul, but also that of the beings and things outside of himself. This is how development takes place.

Modern man lives in the manasical state, that is, he is able to change something in his astral body, but not yet in his etheric body, and least of all in his physical body. Therefore, man takes in from another only as much as corresponds to his stage of development. “You are like the spirit you understand, not like me!” This saying also applies here.

According to Christian terminology, the designations correspond:

Why is Budhi called the “Word”? This brings us to the edge of one of the great mysteries, and we will see the great significance of the term “Word”.

We have seen that man spiritualizes his life body through the Budhi. What does the life body do in man? Growth and reproduction, everything that distinguishes the living being from the mineral. What is the highest expression of the life body? Reproduction, growth beyond itself. What becomes of this last expression of the life body when man consciously covers the path back to spiritualization? How is this reproductive power transformed, what becomes of it when it is purified, spiritualized? — In the human larynx you have the purification, the transformation of the reproductive power, and in the articulated vowel sound, in the human word, you have the transformed reproductive capacity. Analogous to the law “All is below as above”, we find the corresponding process in the physical: the breaking of the voice, the mutation at the time of sexual maturity. All that becomes spirit emanates from the word or the content of the word. This is the very first glimpse of Budhi, when the first articulated sound emerges from the human soul. A mantram has such a significant effect because it is a spiritually articulated word. A mantram is therefore the means for the chela to work down into the depths of his soul.

Thus, in the physical, we have the power of reproduction, through which life is generated and passed on beyond the physical body, becoming something permanent. And just as the physical generative organs transmit bodily life, so the organs of speech — tongue, larynx and breath — transmit spiritual life like an ignition device. In the physiological, the close connection between voice and procreation is obvious. We encounter it in the song of the nightingale, in courtship display, voice change, vocal magic, in singing, cooing, crowing, roaring. We can truly call the larynx the higher sexual organ. The word is the power of procreation for new human spirits; in the word, man achieves a spiritualized creative power. Today, man rules the air with the word, by shaping it rhythmically and organically, by stirring it and enlivening it. On a higher level, he is able to do this in the liquid and finally in the solid element. Then you have transformed the word into the creator's word, for man will achieve this in his development because it was originally so. The life body, emanated from the word of the primal spirit, - this is to be taken literally. That is why Budhi is called the “word”, which means nothing other than: I am.

Thus we see with geometrical clarity the words of the miracle in St. John's Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.” The astral body, which is radiant as the stars, becomes the Word-light; the Primordial God, the Life and the Light, these are the three fundamental concepts of the Gospel of John. John had to develop to the point of Budhi in order to grasp what was revealed in Christ Jesus. The other three Evangelists were not so highly developed. John gives the highest, he was an awakened one. John is the name given to all who are awakened. This is a generic name, and the resurrection of Lazarus in the Gospel of John is nothing more than a description of this awakening. The writer of the Gospel of John, whose name we will hear later, never calls himself by any other name than “the disciple whom the Lord loves”. This is the term for the most intimate disciples, for those in whom the teacher and master has succeeded in awakening the disciple. The description of such an awakening is given by the author of the Gospel of John in the resurrection of Lazarus: “the Lord loved him,” he could awaken him.

Only if we approach such religious documents as the Gospel of John with the deepest humility can we hope to arrive at a literal understanding and to grasp at least a small part of its sacred content.

I have spoken to you about the Sibyls, pointing out how they appear as shadows of the Greek philosophers in Ionia. Through centuries they conjured up from their chaotic soul-life a mixture of deep wisdom and sheer spiritual chaos, and they exerted much more influence on the spiritual life of Southern Europe and its neighbouring regions than external history is willing to recognise. I wanted to indicate that this peculiar outpouring from the souls of the Sibyls points to a certain power of the human soul which in ancient times, and even in the third post-Atlantean epoch, had some good significance. But as one culture-epoch succeeds another in the course of human history, changes occur. The forces which the Sibyls employed to produce, at times, sheer nonsense, were good, legitimate forces in the third post-Atlantean epoch, when Astrology was studied and the wisdom of the stars worked into the souls of men, harmonising the forces which later emerged chaotically as Sibyllism.

You can gather from this that forces which prevail anywhere in the world—including those which prevailed in the souls of the Sibyls—should never be called good or bad in themselves; it depends on when and where they appear. The forces that appeared in the souls of the Sibyls were good and legitimate, but they were not adapted to the fourth post-Atlantean epoch; for the forces that were then intended to prevail in human souls were not those that come from subconscious depths, but those that speak to the soul through the clarity of the Ego. Yesterday we heard how the Hebrew prophets strove to suppress the Sibylline forces and to bring out the forces that speak through the clarity of the Ego. This indeed was the essential characteristic of the old Hebrew school of prophecy—to press back the chaotic Sibylline forces and to bring out those which can speak through the Ego.

The fulfilment of this task given to the Hebrew prophets—we could call it a task of bringing the Sibylline forces into the right path of evolution—came about through the Christ Impulse. When the Christ Impulse entered into the evolution of humanity in the way known to us, one result was that the chaotic forces of the Sibyls were thrust back for a time, as when a stream disappears below ground and reappears later on. These forces were indeed to reappear in another form, a form purified by the Christ Impulse, after the Christ Impulse had entered into the aura of the earth. Just as in human life, after we have been using our soul-forces throughout the day, we have to let them sink into nightly unconsciousness, so that they may reawaken in the morning, so it was necessary that the Sibylline forces, legitimate as they had been during the third post-Atlantean epoch, should flow for a while below the surface, unnoticed, in order to reappear—slowly, as we shall hear.

The forces—legitimate human forces—which emerged so chaotically in the Sibyls were cleansed, so to speak, by the Christ Impulse, but then they sank below the surface of the soul. Human beings in their ordinary consciousness remained entirely unaware that the Christ continued to work on these forces; but so it was.

From the standpoint of Spiritual Science, it is a superb drama to watch this impact of the Christ Impulse; to see how, from the Council of Nicaea onwards, human beings in their normal consciousness quarrel ardently about dogmas, while what was most important for Christianity takes its course in the subconscious depths of the soul. The Christ Impulse does not work where there is strife, but below the surface, and human wisdom will have to uncover a great deal that we may think strange, if we look at it superficially. Much will have to be revealed as a symptom of the Christ Impulse working below the surface. Then we shall understand that essential developments in the historical configuration of Christianity in the West could not come about through the quarrels of Bishops, but sprang from decisions which were reached below the surface of the soul and rose into consciousness like dreams, so that men were aware only of these dreamlike apprehensions and could not discern what was going on in the depths. I will mention only one symptom of this. There are events that reflect, as though through dreams, the activity which the Christ was undertaking in the depths of the soul in order to bring human soul-forces into a right alignment with the course of Western history.

Many of you will perhaps guess something of what I mean if we observe that on October 28, 312, when Constantine the Great, the son of Constantine Chlorus, was making war against Maxentius on the outskirts of Rome, a decision was taken which proved to be of the highest importance for the configuration of Christianity throughout the West. This battle in front of Rome was not determined by military orders, or by the conscious acumen of the leaders, but by dreams and Sibylline omens! We are told—and this is the significant thing—that when Constantine was moving against the gates of Rome, Maxentius had a dream which said to him: “Do not remain in the place where you are now.” Under the influence of this dream, reinforced by an appeal to the Sibylline Books, Maxentius committed the greatest folly—looked at externally—that he could have committed. He left Rome and fought the battle—with an army four times the size of Constantine's—not within the protection of the walls of Rome, but outside them. For the message received from the Sibylline Books ran thus: “If you fight against Constantine outside the gates of Rome, you will destroy Rome's greatest enemy.” A truly oracular utterance! Maxentius obeyed it and with faith and courage went outside the gates. As on an earlier occasion another Sibylline oracle had guided Croesus, so was Maxentius guided by this one. He destroyed the enemy of Rome—himself.

Constantine had a different dream. It said to him: “Carry in front of your troops the monogram of Christ!” He did so and he won the battle. A decisive event for the configuration of Europe, brought about by dreams and Sibylline sayings! There we gain a glimpse of what was going on below the surface in the soul-life of Europe. Truly, like a stream which has disappeared into mountain cavities, so that it is no longer to be seen up above and one may form the strangest conjectures about it, so the Christ Impulse works on below the surface—works, at first, as occult, i.e. hidden, reality.

My dear friends, allow me at this point to confess to you that when in my occult researches I tried to follow this stream, I often lost trace of it; I had to search for places where it reappeared. I could suppose that the stream of the Christ Impulse had reappeared slowly, and that even today it has not fully reappeared but can only give evidence of itself. But where and how did it come to the surface? That is the question. Where did it lay hold of souls sufficiently to make an impression on their consciousness?

If you follow up the various expositions in my books and lecture-courses, and if you feel about it as I do, you will find, especially in the older ones, that what I have said in connection with the name of the Holy Grail is one of the least satisfying parts. That is how I feel and I hope that others have felt it too. It is not that I have said anything that could not be upheld, but simply that when I spoke of this, I felt unsatisfied. I had to give out what could be told with confidence, but often, when I tried to trace the further course of this stream—when I tried to unravel the further occult development of Christianity in the West—then before my soul rose the admonition: “You must first read the name of Parsifal in its right place.”

I had to experience the fact that occult researches are guided in a remarkable way. So that we may not be enticed into speculation, or into realms where we can very easily be borne away from occult truth on the wings of fantasy, we have to be guided slowly and by stages, if at last our research is to bring to light the truth which can of itself impart a kind of conviction of its rightness. So I often had to be content with waiting for an answer to the injunction: “Search out where the name of Parsifal stands!” I had quite understood something you all know from the Parsifal saga—after Parsifal returns, in a certain sense cured of his errors, and again finds the way to the Holy Grail, he is told that his name will appear shining upon the Holy Vessel. But where is the Holy Vessel—where is it to be found? That was the question.

In occult researches of this kind one is often held back, delayed, so that one may not do too much in a day or a year and be driven on to speculate about the truth. Landmarks appear. For me they appeared in the course of really a good many years, during which I sought an answer to the question—Where will you find the name of Parsifal written on the Holy Grail?

I knew that many meanings can be attached to the Holy Vessel in which the Host, the holy bread or wafer, is placed. And on the Holy Vessel itself “Parsifal” was to shine. I was aware also of the deep significance of a passage such as that in St. Mark's Gospel, Chapter 4, verses 11 and 12, 33 and 34, where we are told that the Lord often spoke in parables and only gradually clarified their meaning. In occult investigation, too, one is, led gradually, step by step, and very often only in connection with karmic guidance, and on encountering something that seems to have to do with a certain matter, one very often does not know what will be made of it in one's own soul under the influence of forces coming from the spiritual world. Often one does not know in the least whether something drawn from the depths of the occult world will have a bearing on some problem that one has been following up for years. Thus I did not know how to proceed when I once asked the Norwegian Folk Spirit, the Northern Folk Spirit, about Parsifal and he said: “Learn to understand the saying that through my powers there flowed into the northern Parsifal saga ‘Ganganda greida’”—“circulating cordial”, or something like that!¹ I had no idea what to make of this. It was the same when I was coming out of St. Peter's in Rome under the strong impression made on me by Michelangelo's work that you find on the right-hand side as you enter—the Mother with Jesus, the Mother who looks so young, with Jesus dead already on her knees. And under the after-effect of looking at this work of art (this was a leading of the kind I mean), there came to me, not as a vision but as a true Imagination from the spiritual world, a picture which is inscribed in the Akashic record, showing how Parsifal, after he has gone away for the first time from the Castle of the Grail, where he had failed to ask about the mysteries which prevail there, meets in the forest a young woman who is holding her bridegroom in her lap and weeping over him. But I knew that whether it is the mother or the bride whose bridegroom is dead (Christ is often called the Bridegroom), the picture had a meaning, and that the connection thus established—without my having done anything about it—had a meaning also.

I could tell you of many indications of this kind that came to me during my search for an answer to the question: Where can I find the name of Parsifal inscribed on the Holy Grail? For it had to be there, as the saga itself tells us; and now we need to recall the most important features of the saga.

We know that Parsifal's mother, Herzeleide, bore him in great suffering and with dream-like visions of a quite peculiar character; we know that she wished to shield him from knightly exercises and the code of knightly virtue; that she arranged for the management of her property and withdrew into solitude. She wanted to bring up her child so that he would remain a stranger to the impulses that were certainly present in him; for he was not to be exposed to the dangers that had surrounded his father. But we know also that from an early age the child began to notice everything glorious in Nature; from his mother's teaching he really learnt nothing except that there was a ruling God, and he conceived a wish to serve this God. But he knew nothing of what this God was, and when one day he met some knights he took them for God and knelt before them. When he confessed to his mother that he had seen the knights and wanted to be a knight himself, she put on him a fool's garments and sent him forth. He met with many adventures, and later on—people may call this sentimental but it is of the deepest significance—the mother died of a broken heart because of her son's disappearance: he had not turned back to give her any farewell greeting but had gone forth to experience knightly adventures.

We know that after many wanderings, during which he learnt much about knightly ways and knightly honour, and distinguished himself, he came to the Castle of the Grail. On other occasions I have mentioned that the best literary account of Parsifal's arrival at the Castle is to be found in Chrestien de Troyes. There we are shown how, after often mistaking the way, Parsifal comes to a lonely place and finds two men: one is steering a little boat and the other is fishing from it. They direct him to the Fisher-King, and presently he encounters the Fisher-King in the Grail Castle. The Fisher-King is old and feeble and has to rest on a couch.

While conversing with Parsifal, the Fisher-King hands him a sword, a gift from his niece. Then there appears first in the room a page carrying a spear; the spear is bleeding and the blood runs down over the page's hand; and then a maiden with the Holy Grail, which is a kind of dish. But such glory streams forth from it that all the lights in the hall are outshone by the light of the Holy Grail, just as the stars are overpowered by the light of sun and moon. And then we learn how in the Holy Grail there is something with which the Fisher-King's aged father is nourished in a separate room. He has no need of the sumptuously appointed meal of which the Fisher-King and Parsifal partake. These two nourish themselves with earthly food. But each time a new course—as we should say nowadays—is served, the Holy Grail withdraws into the room of the Fisher-King's aged father, whose only nourishment comes from that which is within the Holy Grail.

Parsifal, to whom it had been intimated on his way from Gurnemanz that he ought not to ask too many questions, does not inquire why the lance bleeds or what the vessel of the Grail signifies—naturally he did not know their names. He then goes to bed for the night, in the same room (according to Chrestien de Troyes) where all this has happened. He was intending to ask questions in the morning, but when morning came he found the whole Castle empty—nobody was there. He called out for someone—nobody was there. He got dressed, and downstairs he found his horse ready. He thought the whole company had ridden out to hunt and wanted to ride after them in order to ask about the miracle of the Grail. But when he was crossing the drawbridge it rose up so quickly that his horse had to make a leap in order not to be thrown into the Castle moat. And he found no trace of the company he had encountered in the Castle on the previous day.

Then Chrestien de Troyes tells us how Parsifal rides on and in a lonely part of the wood comes upon a woman with her husband on her knees, and weeping for him. It is she, according to Chrestien de Troyes, who first indicates to him how he should have asked questions, so as to experience the effect of his questions on the great Mysteries that had been shown to him. We then hear that he went on, often wandering from the right road, until exactly on a Good Friday he came to a hermit, named Trevericent. The hermit tells him how he is being cursed because he has wasted the opportunity of bringing about something like a redemption for the Fisher-King by asking questions about the miracles in the castle. And then he is given many and various teachings.

Now when I tried to accompany Parsifal to the hermit, a saying was disclosed to me—a saying which in the words I have to use for it, in accordance with spiritual-scientific investigation, is nowhere recorded—but I am able to give you the full truth of it. It was spoken—and it made a deep impression on me—by the old hermit to Parsifal, after he had made him acquainted, as far as he could, with the Mystery of Golgotha, of which Parsifal knew little, although he had arrived there on a Good Friday. The old hermit then uttered this saying (I shall use words that are current among us today and are perfectly faithful to the sense of the utterance): “Think of what happened on the occasion of the Mystery of Golgotha! Raise your eyes to the Christ hanging on the Cross, at the moment when He said, ‘From this hour on, there is your mother’; and John left her not. But you”—said the old hermit to Parsifal—“you have left your mother, Herzeleide. It was on your account that she passed from this world.”

The complete connection was not understood by Parsifal, but the words were spoken with the spiritual intention that they should work in his soul as a picture, so that from this picture of John, who did not forsake his mother, he might discern the karmic debt he had incurred by his having deserted his own mother. This was to produce an after—effect in his soul.

We hear then that Parsifal stayed a short while longer with the hermit and then set out again to find the Holy Grail. And it so happens that he finds the Grail shortly or directly before the death of the old Amfortas, the Fisher-King. Then it is that the Knights of the Holy Grail, the Knights of that holy Order, come to him with the words: “Thy name shines in the Grail! Thou art the future Ruler, the King of the Grail, for thy name shines out from the holy Vessel!”

Parsifal becomes the Grail King. And so the name, Parsifal, stands on the holy, gold-gleaming Vessel, in which is the Host. It stands there.

And now, as my concern was to find the Vessel, I was at first misled by a certain circumstance. In occult research—I say this in all humility, with no wish to make an arrogant claim—it has always seemed to me necessary, when a serious problem is involved, to take account not only of what is given directly from occult sources, but also of what external research has brought to light. And in following up a problem it seems to me specially good to make a really conscientious study of what external scholarship has to say, so that one keeps one's feet on the earth and does not get lost in cloud-cuckoo-land. But in the present instance it was exoteric scholarship (this was some time ago) that led me astray. For I gathered from it that when Wolfram von Eschenbach began to write his Parsifal poem, he had—according to his own statement—made use of Chrestien de Troyes and of a certain Kyot. External research has never been able to trace this Kyot and regards him as having been invented by Wolfram von Eschenbach, as though Wolfram von Eschenbach had wanted to attribute to a further source his own extensive additions to Chrestien de Troyes. Exoteric learning is prepared to admit, at most, that Kyot was a copyist of the works of Chrestien de Troyes, and that Wolfram von Eschenbach had put the whole thing together in a rather fanciful way.

So you see in what direction external research goes. It is bound to draw one away, more or less, from the path that leads to Kyot. At the same time, when I had been to a certain extent led astray by external research, something else was borne in upon me (this was another of the karmic readings). I have often spoken of it—in my book Occult Science and in lecture-courses—and should now like to put it as follows.

The first three post-Atlantean epochs, which occur before the Mystery of Golgotha, reappear in a certain sense after the fourth epoch, so that the third epoch reappears in our epoch, the fifth; the second epoch will recur in the sixth, and the first epoch, the epoch of the Holy Rishis, will recur in the seventh, as I have often described. It became clearer and clearer to me—as the outcome of many years of research—that in our epoch there is really something like a resurrection of the Astrology of the third epoch, but permeated now with the Christ Impulse. Today we must search among the stars in a way different from the old ways, but the stellar script must once more become something that speaks to us. And now observe—these thoughts about a revival of the stellar script linked themselves in a remarkable way to the secret of Parsifal, so that I could no longer avoid the belief that the two were connected with each other. And then a picture rose before my soul: a picture shown to me while I was trying to accompany Parsifal in the spirit on his way back to the Grail Castle after his meeting with the hermit Trevericent. This meeting with the hermit is recounted by Chrestien de Troyes in a particularly beautiful and touching way. I should like to read you a little of this, telling how Parsifal comes to the hermit:

Er gibt dem Ross den Lauf
Und seufst aus tiefstem Herzen auf.
Weil er vor Gott sich schuldig fühlt
Und Reue in der Brust ihm wühlt.
Mit Weinen kommt er durch den Wald,
Doch vor der Klause macht er halt,
Steigt ab von seinem Pferde,
Legt seine Wehr zur Erde—
Und fand in einem Kirchlein klein
Den frommen Mann. In seiner Pein
Er vor ihm auf die Knie sinkt,
Das Nass, das ihm vom Auge blinkt,
Rollt endlos nieder auf sein Kinn,
Als er in kindlich schlichtem Sinn
Die Hände vor ihm faltet.
“Der Ihr des Trostes waltet,
Mein reuiges Geständnis hört:
Fünf Jahre war ich wahnbetört,
Dass ohne Glauben ich gelebt
Und nach dem Bösen nur gestrebt.”
“Sag mir, warum du das getan
Und bitte Gott, dass er dich nah'n
Dereinst noch lässt der Sel'gen Schar.”
“Beim Fischerkönig einst ich war;
Ich sah den Speer, auf dessen Stahl
Es blutig tropft. Ich sah den Gral
Und unterliess die Frage.
Was dieses Blut besage,
Und was der Gral bedeute.
Seit diesem Tag bis heute
War ich in schwere Seelennot.
Weit besser ware mir der Tod!
Und da vergass ich unsern Herrn
Und blieb von seiner Gnade fern.”
“So sage mir, wie man dich nennt.”
“Als Perceval man mich erkennt.”
Da seufzt der Greis aus tiefster Brust,
Der Name ist ihm wohl bewusst.
Er spricht: “Dem Leid hat dich vermählt,
Was ohne Wissen du gefehlt.”

[Quoted from Eduard Wechssler's
Die Sage vom Heiligen Gral
(Halle, 1898).]

He roused the steed to start
And sighed from out his deepest heart,
For guilt to God doth rack his breast,
Remorseful feelings give no rest.
With weeping comes he through the wood
Yet halts where hermitage has stood.
Makes ready to dismount,
Lays weapons on the ground—
And finds within a chapel cell
The pious man. ’Fore him he fell
Upon his knees in woeful plight,
The tear that blinked before his sight
Now rolls at last down to his chin
As he with simple childlike mien
Doth fold his hands together
That he may solace gather.
“Hear ye my sad confession:
Five years I bore delusion
While without faith my life I led
And only strove towards the bad.”
“Say me wherefore thou this hast done
And pray to God that He ere long
Will draw thee near the holy Bond.”
“I once by Fisher-King did stand.
I saw the spear upon whose steel
Hung drops of blood. I saw the Grail
Yet did forbear to put the word
What signified this blood,
This Grail, what signified—
’Twere better had I died!”
Until this day indeed
My soul's in direst need.
Our Lord I thought of never more
And from His Grace I stayed afar.”
“Now tell me what thy name may be.”
“As Parsifal men speak of me.”
Then sighs the aged man with groan,
The name to him is full well-known.
“What thou unwittingly hast left undone
Has brought this sorrow as thy doom.”

[Translation by M. Cotterell.]

Then come the conversations between Parsifal and the hermit of which I have spoken already. And when I sought to accompany Parsifal in spirit during his return to the Grail, it was often as though there shone forth in the soul how he traveled by day and by night, how he devoted himself to nature by day and to the stars by night, as if the stellar script had spoken to his unconscious self and as if this was a prophecy of that which the holy company of Knights who came from the Grail to meet him had said: “Thy name shines forth in radiance from the Grail.” But Parsifal, quite clearly, did not know what to make of the message of the stars, for it remained in his unconscious being, and therefore one cannot so very well interpret it, however much one may try to immerse oneself in it through spiritual research.

Then I tried once more to get back to Kyot, and behold—a particular thing said about him by Wolfram von Eschenbach made a deep impression on me and I felt I had to relate it to the ‘ganganda greida’. The connection seemed inevitable. I had to relate it also to the image of the woman holding her dead bridegroom on her lap. And then, when I was not in the least looking for it, I came upon a saying by Kyot: “er jach, ez hiez ein dinc der gral”—“he said, a thing was called the Grail.” Now exoteric research itself tells us how Kyot came to these words—“er jach, ez hiez ein dinc der gral.” He acquired a book by Flegetanis in Spain—an astrological book. No doubt about it, one may say: Kyot is the man who stimulated by Flegetanis—whom he calls Flegetanis and in whom lives a certain knowledge of the stellar script—Kyot is the man who, stimulated by this revived astrology, sees the thing called the Grail. Then I knew that Kyot is not to be given up; I knew that he discloses an important clue if one is searching in the sense of Spiritual Science: he at least has seen the Grail.

Where, then, is the Grail, which today must be found in such a way that the name of Parsifal stands upon it? Where can it be found? Now in the course of my researches it had been shown to me that the name—that is the first thing—must be sought for in the stellar script. And then, on a day which I must regard as specially significant for me, I was shown where the gold-gleaming vessel in its reality is to be found, so that through it—through its symbolical expression in the stellar script—we are led to the secret of the Grail. And then I saw in the stellar script something that anyone can see—only he will not immediately discern the secret. For one day, while I was following with inner sight the gold-gleaming sickle of the moon, as it appeared in the heavens, with the dark moon like a great disc dimly visible within it ... so that with physical sight one saw the gold-gleaming moon—ganganda greida, the journeying viaticum—and within it the large Host, the dark disc. This is not to be seen if one merely glances superficially at the moon, but it is evident if one looks closely—and there, in wonderful letters of the occult script, was the name Parsifal!

That, to begin with, was the stellar script. For in fact, if this reading of the stellar script is seen in the right light, it yields for our hearts and minds something—though perhaps not all—of the Parsifal secret, the secret of the Holy Grail. What I have still to say, briefly, on this subject I will give you tomorrow.

• 1. Another possible rendering is “journeying viaticum.” (See note at the end of the lectures.)

[ 1 ] In public discussions of the anthroposophy for which I stand there have been mingled for some time past statements and judgments about the course which my life has taken. From what has been said in this connection conclusions have been drawn with regard to the origin of the variations so called which some persons believe they have discovered in the course of my spiritual evolution. In view of these facts, friends have felt that it would be well if I myself should write something about my own life.

[ 2 ] This does not accord, I must confess, with my own inclinations. For it has always been my endeavour so to order what I might have to say and what I might think well to do according as the thing itself might require, and not from personal considerations. To be sure, it has always been my conviction that in many provinces of life the personal element gives to human action a colouring of the utmost value; only it seems to me that this personal element should reveal itself through the manner in which one speaks and acts, and not through conscious attention to one's own personality. Whatever may come about as a result of such attention is something a man has to settle with himself.

[ 3 ] And so it has been possible for me to resolve upon the following narration only because it is necessary to set in a true light by means of an objective written statement many a false judgment in reference to the consistency between my life and the thing that I have fostered, and because those who through friendly interest have urged this upon me seem to me justified in view of such false judgments.

The home of my parents was in Lower Austria. My father was born at Geras, a very small place in the Lower Austrian forest region; my mother at Horn, a city of the same district.

[ 4 ] My father passed his childhood and youth in the most intimate association with the seminary of the Premonstratensian Order at Geras. He always looked back with the greatest affection upon this time in his life. He liked to tell how he served in the college, and how the monks instructed him. Later on, he was a huntsman in the service of Count Hoyos. This family had a place at Horn. It was there that my father became acquainted with my mother. Then he gave up the work of huntsman and became a telegraphist on the Southern Austrian Railway. He was sent at first to a little station in southern Styria. Then he was transferred to Kraljevec on the border between Hungary and Croatia. It was during this period that he married my mother. Her maiden name was Blie. She was descended from an old family of Horn. I was born at Kraljevec on February 27, 1861. It thus happened that the place of my birth was far removed from that part of the world from which my family came.

[ 5 ] My father, and my mother as well, were true children of the South Austrian forest country, north of the Danube. It is a region into which the railway was late in coming. Even to this day it has left Geras untouched. My parents loved the life they had lived in their native region. When they spoke of this, one realized instinctively how in their souls they had never parted from that birthplace in spite of the fate that forced them to pass the greater part of their lives far away from it. And so, when my father retired, after a life filled with work, they returned at once there-to Horn.

[ 6 ] My father was a man of the utmost good will, but of a temper – especially while he was still young – which could be passionately aroused. The work of a railway employee was to him a matter of duty; he had no love for it. While I was still a boy, he would sometimes have to remain on duty for three days and three nights continuously. Then he would be relieved for twenty-four hours. Under such conditions life for him wore no bright colours; all was dull grey. Some pleasure he found in keeping up with political developments. In these he took the liveliest interest. My mother, since our worldly goods were none too plentiful, was forced to devote herself to household duties. Her days were filled with loving care of her children and of the little home.

[ 7 ] When I was a year and a half old; my father was transferred to Mödling, near Vienna. There my parents remained a half-year. Then my father was put in charge of the little station on the Southern Railway at Pottschach in Lower Austria, near the Styrian border. There I lived from my second to my eighth year. A wonderful landscape formed the environment of my childhood. The view stretched as far as the mountains that separate Lower Austria from Styria: [ 8 ] “Snow Mountain,” Wechsel, the Rax Alps, the Semmering. Snow Mountain caught the sun's earliest rays on its bare summit, and the kindling reflection of these from the mountain down to the little village was the first greeting of dawn in the beautiful summer days. The grey back of the Wechsel put one by contrast in a sober mood. It was as if the mountains rose up out of the all-surrounding green of the friendly landscape. On the distant boundaries of the circle one had the majesty of the peaks, and close around the tenderness of nature.

[ 8 ] But around the little station all interest was centered on the business of the railway. At that time the trains passed in that region only at long intervals; but, when they came, many of the men of the village who could spare the time were generally gathered at the station, seeking thus to bring some change into their lives, which they found otherwise very monotonous. The schoolmaster, the priest, the book-keeper of the manor, and often the burgomaster as well, would be there.

[ 9 ] It seems to me that passing my childhood in such an environment had a certain significance for my life. For I felt a very deep interest in everything about me of a mechanical character; and I know how this interest tended constantly to overshadow in my childish soul the affections which went out to that tender and yet mighty nature into which the railway train, in spite of being in subjection to this mechanism, must always disappear in the far distance.

[ 10 ] In the midst of all this there was present the influence of a certain personality of marked originality, the priest of St. Valentin, a place that one could reach on foot from Pottschach in about three-quarters of an hour. This priest liked to come to the home of my parents. Almost every day he took a walk to our home, and he nearly always stayed for a long time. He belonged to the liberal type of Catholic cleric, tolerant and genial; a robust, broad-shouldered man. He was quite witty, too; had many jokes to tell, and was pleased when he drew a laugh from the persons about him. And they would laugh even more loudly over what he had said long after he was gone. He was a man of a practical way of life, and liked to give good practical advice. Such a piece of practical counsel produced its effects in my family for a long time. There was a row of acacia trees (Robinien) on each side of the railway at Pottschach. Once we were walking along the little footpath under these trees, when he remarked: “Ah, what beautiful acacia blossoms these are!” He seized one of the branches at once and broke off a mass of the blossoms. Spreading out his huge red pocket-handkerchief – he was extremely fond of snuff – he carefully wrapped the twigs in this, and put the “Binkerl” under his arm. Then he said: “How lucky you are to have so many acacia blossoms! “My father was astonished, and answered: “Why, what can we do with them?” “Wh-a-a-t?” said the priest. “Don't you know that you can bake the acacia blossoms just like elder flowers, and that they taste much better then because they have a far more delicate aroma?” From that time on we often had in our family, as opportunity offered from time to time, “baked acacia blossoms.”

[ 11 ] In Pottschach a daughter and another son were born to my parents. There was never any further addition to the family.

[ 12 ] As a very young child I showed a marked individuality. From the time that I could feed myself, I had to be carefully watched. For I had formed the conviction that a soup-bowl or a coffee cup was meant to be used only once; and so, every time that I was not watched, as soon as I had finished eating something I would throw the bowl or the cup under the table and smash it to pieces. Then, when my mother appeared, I would call out to her : “Mother, I've finished!”

[ 13 ] This could not have been a mere propensity for destroying things, since I handled my toys with the greatest care, and kept them in good condition for a long time. Among these toys those that had the strongest attraction for me were the kind which even now I consider especially good. These were picture-books with figures that could be made to move by pulling strings attached to them at the bottom. One associated little stories with these figures, to whom one gave a part of their life by pulling the strings. Many a time have I sat by the hour poring over the picture-books with my sister. Besides, I learned from them by myself the first steps in reading.

[ 14 ] My father was concerned that I should learn early to read and write. When I reached the required age, I was sent to the village school. The schoolmaster was an old man to whom the work of “teaching school” was a burdensome business. Equally burdensome to me was the business of being taught by him. I had no faith whatever that I could ever learn anything from him. For he often came to our house with his wife and his little son, and this son, according to my notions at that time, was a scamp. So I had this idea firmly fixed in my head: “Whoever has such a scamp for a son, nobody can learn anything from him.” Besides, something else happened, “quite dreadful.” This scamp, who also was in the school, played the prank one day of dipping a chip into all the ink-wells of the school and making circles around them with dabs of ink. His father noticed these. Most of the pupils had already gone. The teacher's son, two other boys, and I were still there. The schoolmaster was beside himself; he talked in a frightful manner. I felt sure that he would actually roar but for the fact that his voice was always husky. In spite of his rage, he got an inkling from our behaviour as to who the culprit was. But things then took a different turn. The teacher's home was next-door to the school-room. The “lady head mistress” heard the commotion and came into the school-room with wild eyes, waving her arms in the air. To her it was perfectly clear that her little son could not have done this thing. She put the blame on me. I ran away. My father was furious when I reported this matter at home. Then, the next time the teacher's family came to our house, he told them with the utmost bluntness that the friendship between us was ended, and added baldly: “My boy shall never set foot in your school again,” Now my father himself took over the task of teaching me; and so I would sit beside him in his little office by the hour, and had to read and write between whiles whenever he was busy with his duties.

[ 15 ] Neither with him could I feel any real interest in what had to come to me by way of direct instruction. What interested me was the things that my father himself was writing. I would imitate what he did. In this way I learned a great deal. As to the things I was taught by him, I could see no reason why I should do these just for my own improvement. On the other hand, I became rooted, in a child's way, in everything that formed a part of the practical work of life. The routine of a railway office, everything connected with it, – this caught my attention. It was, however, more especially the laws of nature that had already taken me as their little errand boy. When I wrote, it was because I had to write, and I wrote as fast as I could so that I should soon have a page filled. For then I could strew the sort of dust my father used over this writing. Then I would be absorbed in watching how quickly the dust dried up the ink, and what sort of mixture they made together. I would try the letters over and over with my fingers to discover which were already dry, which not. My curiosity about this was very great, and it was in this way chiefly that I quickly learned the alphabet. Thus my writing lessons took on a character that did not please my father, but he was good-natured and reproved me only by frequently calling me an incorrigible little “rascal.” This, however, was not the only thing that evolved in me by means of the writing lessons. What interested me more than the shapes of the letters was the body of the writing quill itself. I could take my father's ruler and force the point of this into the slit in the point of the quill, and in this manner carry on researches in physics, concerning the elasticity of a feather. Afterwards, of course, I bent the feather back into shape; but the beauty of my handwriting distinctly suffered in this process.

[ 16 ] This was also the time when, with my inclination toward the understanding of natural phenomena, I occupied a position midway between seeing through a combination of things, on the one hand, and “the limits of understanding” on the other. About three minutes from the home of my parents there was a mill. The owners of the mill were the god-parents of my brother and sister. We were always welcome at this mill. I often disappeared within it. Then I studied with all my heart the work of a miller. I forced a way for myself into the “interior of nature.” Still nearer us, however, there was a yarn factory. The raw material for this came to the railway station; the finished product went away from the station. I participated thus in everything which disappeared within the factory and everything which reappeared. We were strictly forbidden to take one peep at the “inside” of this factory. This we never succeeded in doing. There were the “limits of understanding” And how I wished to step across the boundaries! For almost every day the manager of the factory came to see my father on some matter of business. For me as a boy this manager was a problem, casting a miraculous veil, as it were, over the “inside” of those works. He was spotted here and there with white tufts; his eyes had taken on a certain set look from working at machinery. He spoke hoarsely, as if with a mechanical speech. “What is the connection between this man and everything that is surrounded by those walls?” – this was an insoluble problem facing my mind. But I never questioned anyone regarding the mystery. For it was my childish conviction that it does no good to ask questions about a problem which is concealed from one's eyes. Thus I lived between the friendly mill and the unfriendly factory.

[ 17 ] Once something happened at the station that was very “dreadful.” A freight train rumbled up. My father stood looking at it. One of the rear cars was on fire. The crew had not noticed this at all. All that followed as a result of this made a deep impression on me. Fire had started in a car by reason of some highly inflammable material. For a long time I was absorbed in the question how such a thing could happen. What my surroundings said to me in this case was, as in many other matters, not to my satisfaction. I was filled with questions, and I had to carry these about with me unanswered. It was thus that I reached my eighth year.

[ 18 ] During my eighth year the family moved to Neudörfl, a little Hungarian village. This village is just at the border over against Lower Austria. The boundary here was formed by the Laytha River. The station that my father had in charge was at one end of the village. Half an hour's walk further on was the boundary stream. Still another half-hour brought one to Wiener-Neustadt.

[ 19 ] The range of the Alps that I had seen close by at Pottschach was now visible only at a distance. Yet the mountains still stood there in the background to awaken our memories when we looked at lower mountains that could be reached in a short time from our family's new home. Massive heights covered with beautiful forests bounded the view in one direction; in the other, the eye could range over a level region, decked out in fields and woodland, all the way to Hungary. Of all the mountains, I gave my unbounded love to one that could be climbed in three-quarters of an hour. On its crest there stood a chapel containing a painting of Saint Rosalie. This chapel came to be the objective of a walk which I often took at first with my parents and my sister and brother, and later loved to take alone. Such walks were filled with a special happiness because of the fact that at that time of year we could bring back with us rich gifts of nature. For in these woods there were blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries. One could often find an inner satisfaction in an hour and a half of berrying for the purpose of adding a delicious contribution to the family supper, which otherwise consisted merely of a piece of buttered bread or bread and cheese for each of us.

[ 20 ] Still another pleasant thing came from rambling about in these forests, which were the common property of all. There the villagers got their supplies of wood. The poor gathered it for themselves; the well-to-do had servants to do this. One could become acquainted with all of these most-friendly persons. They always had time for a chat when Steiner Rudolf met them. “So thou goest again for a bit of a walk, Steiner Rudolf” – thus they would begin, and then they would talk about everything imaginable. The people did not think of the fact that they had a mere child before them. For at the bottom of their souls they also were only children, even when they could number sixty years. And so I really learned from the stories they told me almost everything that happened in the houses of the village.

[ 21 ] Half an hour's walk from Neudörfl is Sauerbrunn, where there is a spring containing iron and carbonic acid. The road to this lies along the railway, and part of the way through beautiful woods. During vacation time I went there every day early in the morning, carrying with me a “Blutzer.” This is a water vessel made of clay. The smallest of these hold three or four litres. One could fill this without charge at the spring. Then at midday the family could enjoy the delicious sparkling water.

[ 22 ] Toward Wiener-Neustadt and farther on toward Styria, the mountains fall away to a level country. Through this level country the Laytha River winds its way. On the slope of the mountains there was a cloister of the Order of the Most Holy Redeemer. I often met the monks on my walks. I still remember how glad I should have been if they had spoken to me. They never did. And so I carried away from these meetings an undefined but solemn feeling which remained constantly with me for a long time. It was in my ninth year that the idea became fixed in me that there must be weighty matters in connection with the duties of these monks which I ought to learn to understand. There again I was filled with questions which I had to carry around unanswered. Indeed, these questions about all possible sorts of things made me as a boy very lonely.

[ 23 ] On the foothills of the Alps two castles were visible: Pitten and Frohsdorf. In the second there lived at that time Count Chambord, who, at the beginning of the year 1870, claimed the throne of France as Henry V. Very deep were the impressions that I received from that fragment of life bound up with the castle Frohsdorf. The Count with his retinue frequently took the train for a journey from the station at Neudörfl.

Everything drew my attention to these men. Especially deep was the impression made by one man in the Count's retinue. He had but one ear. The other had been slashed off clean. The hair lying over this he had braided. At the sight of this I perceived for the first time what a duel is. For it was in this manner that the man had lost one ear.

[ 24 ] Then, too, a fragment of social life unveiled itself to me in connection with Frohsdorf. The assistant teacher at Neudörfl, whom I was often permitted to see at work in his little chamber, prepared innumerable petitions to Count Chambord for the poor of the village and the country around. In response to every such appeal there always came back a donation of one gulden, and from this the teacher was always allowed to keep six kreuzer for his services. This income he had need of, for the annual salary yielded him by his profession was fifty-eight gulden. In addition, he had his morning coffee and his lunch with the “schoolmaster.” Then, too, he gave special lessons to about ten children, of whom I was one. For such lessons the charge was one gulden a month.

[ 25 ] To this assistant teacher I owe a great deal. Not that I was greatly benefited by his lessons at the school. In that respect I had about the same experience as at Pottschach. As soon as we moved to Neudörfl, I was sent to school there This school consisted of one room in which five classes of both boys and girls all had their lessons. While the boy who sat on my bench were at their task of copying out the story of King Arpad, the very little fellows stood at a black board on which i and u had been written with chalk for them. It was simply impossible to do anything save to let the mind fall into a dull reverie while the hands almost mechanically took care of the copying. Almost all the teaching had to be done by the assistant teacher alone. The “schoolmaster” appeared in the school only very rarely. He was also the village notary, and it was said that in this occupation he had so much to take up his time that he could never keep school.

[ 26 ] In spite of all this I learned earlier than usual to read well. Because of this fact the assistant teacher was able to take hold of something within me which has influenced the whole course of my life. Soon after my entrance into the Neudörfl school, I found a book on geometry in his room. I was on such good terms with the teacher that I was permitted at once to borrow the book for my own use. I plunged into it with enthusiasm. For weeks at a time my mind it was filled with coincidences, similarities between triangles, squares, polygons; I racked my brains over the question: Where do parallel lines actually meet? The theorem of Pythagoras fascinated me. [ 27 ] That one can live within the mind in the shaping of forms perceived only within oneself, entirely without impression upon the external senses – this gave me the deepest satisfaction. I found in this a solace for the unhappiness which my unanswered questions had caused me. To be able to lay hold upon something in the spirit alone brought to me an inner joy. I am sure that I learned first in geometry to experience this joy.

[ 28 ] In my relation to geometry I must now perceive the first budding forth of a conception which has since gradually evolved in me. This lived within me more or less unconsciously during my childhood, and about my twentieth year took a definite and fully conscious form.

[ 29 ] I said to myself: “The objects and occurrences which the senses perceive are in space. But, just as this space is outside of man, so there exists also within man a sort of soul-space which is the arena of spiritual realities and occurrences.” In my thoughts I could not see anything in the nature of mental images such as man forms within him from actual things, but I saw a spiritual world in this soul-arena. Geometry seemed to me to be a knowledge which man appeared to have produced but which had, nevertheless, a significance quite independent of man. Naturally I did not, as a child, say all this to myself distinctly, but I felt that one must carry the knowledge of the spiritual world within oneself after the fashion of geometry.

[ 30 ] For the reality of the spiritual world was to me as certain as that of the physical. I felt the need, however, for a sort of justification for this assumption. I wished to be able to say to myself that the experience of the spiritual world is just as little an illusion as is that of the physical world. With regard to geometry I said to myself: “Here one is permitted to know something which the mind alone, through its own power, experiences.” In this feeling I found the justification for the spiritual world that I experienced, even as, so to speak, for the physical. And in this way I talked about this. I had two conceptions which were naturally undefined, but which played a great role in my mental life even before my eighth year. I distinguished things as those “which are seen” and those “which are not seen.”

[ 31 ] I am relating these matters quite frankly, in spite of the fact that those persons who are seeking for evidence to prove that anthroposophy is fantastic will, perhaps, draw the conclusion from this that even as a child I was marked by a gift for the fantastic: no wonder, then, that a fantastic philosophy should also have evolved within me.

[ 32 ] But it is just because I know how little I have followed my own inclinations in forming conceptions of a spiritual world – having on the contrary followed only the inner necessity of things – that I myself can look back quite objectively upon the childlike unaided manner in which I confirmed for myself by means of geometry the feeling that I must speak of a world “which is not seen.”

[ 33 ] Only I must also say that I loved to live in that world For I should have been forced to feel the physical world as a sort of spiritual darkness around me had it not received light from that side.

[ 34 ] The assistant teacher of Neudörfl had provided me, in the geometry text-book, with that which I then needed – justification for the spiritual world.

[ 35 ] In other ways also I owe much to him. He brought to me the element of art. He played the piano and the violin and he drew a great deal. These things attracted me powerfully to him. Just as much as I possibly could be, was I with him. Of drawing he was especially fond, and even in my ninth year he interested me in drawing with crayons. I had in this way to copy pictures under his direction. Long did I sit, for instance, copying a portrait of Count Szedgenyi.

[ 36 ] Very seldom at Neudörfl, but frequently in the neighbouring town of Sauerbrunn, could I listen to the impressive music of the Hungarian gipsies.

[ 37 ] All this played its part in a childhood which was passed in the immediate neighbourhood of the church and the churchyard. The station at Neudörfl was but a few steps from the church, and between these lay the churchyard. [ 38 ] If one went along by the churchyard and then a short stretch further, one came into the village itself. This consisted of two rows of houses. One row began with the school and the other with the home of the priest. Between those two rows of houses flowed a little brook, along the banks of which grew stately nut trees. In connection with these nut trees an order of precedence grew up among the children of the school. When the nuts began to get ripe, the boys and girls assailed the trees with stones, and in this way laid in a winter's supply of nuts. In autumn almost the only thing anyone talked about was the size of his harvest of nuts. Whoever had gathered most of all was the most looked up to, and then step by step was the descent all the way down – to me, the last, who as an “outsider in the village” had no right to share in this order of precedence.

[ 39 ] Near the railway station, the row of most important houses, in which the “big farmers” lived, was met at right angles by a row of some twenty houses owned by the “middle class” villagers. Then, beginning from the gardens which belonged to the station, came a group of thatched houses belonging to the “small cottagers.” These constituted the immediate neighbourhood of my family. The roads leading out from the village went past fields and vineyards that were owned by the villagers. Every year I took part with the “small cottagers” in the vintage, and once also in a village wedding.

[ 40 ] Next to the assistant teacher, the person whom I loved most among those who had to do with the direction of the school was the priest. He came regularly twice a week to give instruction in religion and often besides for inspection of the school. The image of the man was deeply impressed upon my mind, and he has come back into my memory again and again throughout my life. Among the persons whom I came to know up to my tenth or eleventh year, he was by far the most significant. He was a vigorous Hungarian patriot. He took active part in the process of Magyarizing the Hungarian territory which was then going forward. From this point of view he wrote articles in the Hungarian language, which I thus learned through the fact that the assistant teacher had to make clear copies of these and he always discussed their contents with me in spite of my youthfulness. But the priest was also an energetic worker for the Church. This once impressed itself deeply upon my mind through one of his sermons.

[ 41 ] At Neudörfl there was a lodge of Freemasons. To the villagers this was shrouded in mystery, and they wove about it the most amazing legends. The leading role in this lodge belonged to the manager of a match-factory which stood at the end of the village. Next to him in prominence among the persons immediately interested in the matter were the manager of another factory and a clothing merchant. Otherwise the only significance attaching to the lodge arose from the fact that from time to time strangers from “remote parts” were visitors there, and these seemed to the villagers in the highest degree unwelcome. The clothing merchant was a noteworthy person. He always walked with his head bowed over as if in deep thought. People called him “the make-believe,” and his isolation rendered it neither possible nor necessary that anyone should approach him. The building in which the lodge met belonged to his home.

[ 42 ] I could establish no sort of relationship to this lodge. For the entire behaviour of the persons about me in regard to this matter was such that here again I had to refrain from asking questions; besides, the utterly absurd way in which the manager of the match-factory talked about the church made a shocking impression on me.

[ 43 ] Then one Sunday the priest delivered a sermon in his energetic fashion in which he set forth in due order the true principles of morality for human life and spoke of the enemy of the truth in figures of speech framed to fit the lodge. As a climax, he delivered his advice: “Beloved Christians, beware of him who is an enemy of the truth: for example, a Mason or a Jew.” In the eyes of the people, the factory owner and the clothing merchant were thus authoritatively exposed. The vigour with which this had been uttered made a specially deep impression upon me. [ 44 ] I owe to the priest also, because of a certain profound impression made upon me, a very great deal in the later orientation of my spiritual life. One day he came into the school, gathered round him in the teacher's little room the “riper” children, among whom he included me, unfolded a drawing he had made, and with the help of this explained to us the Copernican system of astronomy. He spoke about this very vividly – the revolution of the earth around the sun, its rotation on its axis, the inclination of the axis in summer and winter, and also the zones of the earth. In all of it I was absorbed; I made drawings of a similar kind for days together, and then received from the priest further special instruction concerning eclipses of the sun and the moon; and thence-forward I directed all my search for knowledge toward this subject. I was then about ten years old, and I could not yet write without mistakes in spelling and grammar.

[ 45 ] Of the deepest significance for my life as a boy was the nearness of the church and the churchyard beside it. Everything that happened in the village school was affected in its course by its relationship to these. This was not by reason of certain dominant social and political relationships existing in every community; it was due to the fact that the priest was an impressive personality. The assistant teacher was at the same time organist of the church and custodian of the vestments used at Mass and of the other church furnishings. He performed all the services of an assistant to the priest in his religious ministrations. We schoolboys had to carry out the duties of ministrants and choristers during Mass, rites for the dead, and funerals. The solemnity of the Latin language and of the liturgy was a thing in which my boyish soul found a Vital happiness. Because of the fact that up to my tenth year I took such an earnest part in the services of the church, I was often in the company of the priest whom I so revered. [ 46 ] In the home of my parents I received no encouragement in this matter of my relationship to the church. My father took no part in this. He was then a “freethinker.” He never entered the church to which I had become so deeply attached; and yet he also, as a boy and as a young man, had been equally devoted and active. In his case this all changed once more only when he went back, as an old man on a pension, to Horn, his native region. There he became again “a pious man.” But by that time I had long ceased to have any association with my parents' home.

[ 47 ] From the time of my boyhood at Neudörfl, I have always had the strongest impression of the manner in which the contemplation of the church services in close connection with the solemnity of liturgical music causes the riddle of existence to rise in powerful suggestive fashion before the mind. The instruction in the Bible and the catechism imparted by the priest had far less effect upon my mental world than what he accomplished by means of liturgy in mediating between the sensible and the supersensible. From the first this was to me no mere form, but a profound experience. It was all the more so because of the fact that in this I was a stranger in the home of my parents. Even in the atmosphere I had to breathe in my home, my spirit did not lose that vital experience which it had acquired from the liturgy. I passed my life amid this home environment without sharing in it, perceived it; but my real thoughts, feelings, and experience were continually in that other world. I can assert emphatically however, in this connection that I was no dreamer, but quite self-sufficient in all practical affairs.

[ 48 ] A complete counterpart to this world of mine was my father's political affairs. He and another employee took turns on duty. This man lived at another railway station, for which he was partly responsible. He came to Neudörfl only every two or three days. During the free hours of the evening he and my father would talk politics. This would take place at a table which stood near the station under two huge and wonderful lime trees. There our whole family and the other employee would assemble. My mother knitted or crocheted; my brother and sister busied themselves about us; I would often sit at the table and listen to the unheard of political arguments of the two men. My participation, however, never had anything to do with the sense of what they were saying, but only with the form which the conversation took. They were always on opposite sides; if one said “Yes,” the other always contradicted him with “No.” All this, however, was marked, not only by a certain intensity – indeed, violence – but also by the good humour which was a basic element in my father's nature.

[ 49 ] In the little circle often gathered there, to which were frequently added some of the “notabilities” of the village, there appeared at times a doctor from Wiener-Neustadt. He had many patients in this place, where at that time there was no physician. He came from Wiener-Neustadt to Neudörfl on foot, and would come to the station after visiting his patients to wait for the train on which he went back. This man passed with my parents, and with most persons who knew him, as an odd character. He did not like to talk about his profession as a doctor, but all the more gladly did he talk about German literature. It was from him that I first heard of Lessing, Goethe, Schiller. At my home there was never any such conversation. Nothing was known of such things. Nor in the village school was there any mention of such matters. There the emphasis was all on Hungarian history. Priest and assistant teacher had no interest in the masters of German literature. And so it happened that with the Wiener-Neustadt doctor a whole new world came within my range of vision. He took an interest in me; often drew me aside after he had rested for a while under the lime trees, walked up and down with me by the station, and talked – not like a lecturer, but enthusiastically – about German literature. In these talks he set forth all sorts of ideas as to what is beautiful and what is ugly.

[ 50 ] This also has remained as a picture with me, giving me many happy hours in memory throughout my life: the tall, slender doctor, with his quick, long stride, always with his umbrella in his right hand held invariably in such a way that it dangled by his side, and I, a boy of ten years, on the other side, quite absorbed in what the man was saying.

[ 51 ] Along with all these things I was tremendously concerned with everything pertaining to the railroad. I first learned the principles of electricity in connection with the station telegraph. I learned also as a boy to telegraph.

[ 52 ] As to language, I grew up in the dialect of German that is spoken in Eastern Lower Austria. This was really the same as that then used in those parts of Hungary bordering on Lower Austria. My relationship to reading and that to writing were entirely different. In my boyhood I passed rapidly over the words in reading; my mind went immediately to the perceptions, the concepts, the ideas, so that I got no feeling from reading either for spelling or for writing grammatically. On the other hand, in writing I had a tendency to fix the word-forms in my mind by their sounds as I generally heard them spoken in the dialect. For this reason it was only after the most arduous effort that I gained facility in writing the literary language; whereas reading was easy for me from the first.

[ 53 ] Under such influences I grew up to the age at which my father had to decide whether to send me to the Gymnasium or to the Realschule ¹ at Wiener-Neustadt. From that time on I heard much talk with other persons – in between the political discussions – as to my own future. My father was given this and that advice; I already knew: “He likes to listen to what others say, but he acts according to his own fixed and definite determination.”

• 1. The Gymnasium and the Realschule are secondary schools, the curriculum of the former giving more prominence to the classics and that of the later to science and modern languages.

THE process that I have described to you as the division of the sexes was of such a nature that the two sexes are to be thought of as still united in that animal-man of the Moon and also in his descendants in the Moon recapitulation of the Earth. Then there really took place a kind of cleavage of the human body. This cleavage came about through densification; not until a mineral kingdom had been separated out as it is today could the present human body arise, representing a single sex. The Earth and the human body had first to be solidified to the mineral nature as we know it. In the soft human bodies of the Moon and of the earlier periods of the Earth human beings were of dual-sex, male-female.

Now we must remind ourselves of the fact that Man in a certain respect has preserved a residue of the ancient dual sex inasmuch as in the present man the physical body is masculine, the etheric body feminine, and in the woman it is reversed; for the physical feminine body has a masculine etheric body. These facts open up an interesting insight into the soul life of the sexes; the capacity for sacrifice in the service of love displayed by the woman is connected with the masculinity of the etheric body, whereas the ambition of the man is explained when we realise the feminine nature of his etheric body. I have already said that separation into the human sexes has arisen from the intermingling of the forces sent to us from the sun and the moon. Now you must be clear that in the man the stronger influence on the etheric body emanates from the moon and the stronger influence on the physical body from the sun. In the woman the opposite is the case, the physical body is influenced by the forces of the moon and the etheric body by those of the sun.

The continual change of mineral substances in man's present body could not take place until the mineral realm had taken shape; before this there was quite a different form of nourishment. During the Sun-period of the Earth all plants were permeated by milky juices. Man's nourishment was then actually effected by his imbibing the milk-juices from the plants as today the child draws its nourishment from the mother. The plants which still contain milky juices are the last stragglers from that time when all the plants supplied these juices in abundance. It was not till a later time that nourishment took on its present form.

To understand the significance of the separation of the sexes we must be clear that upon the Moon and during its recapitulation on the Earth all the beings looked very much alike. Just as the cow has the same appearance as her “daughters,” as all other cows, since the Group-soul lies behind, so could men scarcely be distinguished from their forefathers, and this continued till long into the Atlantean Age. Whence arises the fact that human beings no longer resemble each other?

It comes from the rise of the two sexes. From the original dual sex-nature the tendency had continued in the female being to produce similarity in the descendants; in the male the influence worked differently, it tended to call forth variety, individualisation, and with the flowing of the male force into the female, dissimilarity was increasingly created. Thus it was through the male influence that the power of developing individuality came about.

The ancient dual sex had yet another peculiarity. If you had asked one of the old dwellers on the Moon about his experiences, he would have described them as identical with those of his earliest ancestors; everything lived on through the generations. The gradual rise of a consciousness that only extends from birth to death came about by the individualising of the human race, and at the same time arose the possibility of birth and death, as we know them today. For those ancient Moon beings with their floating, swimming motion, were suspended from the environment with which they were united by the “strings” conducting the blood. Thus if a being died it was not a death of the soul, it was only a dying off of a sort of limb, while the consciousness remained above. It was as if your hand, for instance, should wither on your body and a new hand grow in its place. So these human beings with their dim consciousness only experienced dying as a gradual withering of their bodies. These bodies dried up and new ones continually sprang forth; consciousness, however, was preserved through the consciousness of the group-soul, so that really a kind of immortality existed.

Then arose the present blood, which was created in the human body itself, and this went hand in hand with the rise of the two sexes. And with it the necessity of a remarkable process came about. The blood creates a continuous conflict between life and death, and a being who forms red blood within himself becomes the scene of a perpetual struggle, for red blood is continually consumed and changed into blue blood, into a substance of death. Together with man's individual transformation of the blood arose that darkening of the consciousness beyond birth and death. Now, for the first time, with the lighting up of the present consciousness, man lost the ancient dimly sensed immortality, so that the impossibility of looking beyond birth and death is intimately connected with the division of the sexes. And something else too is connected with this.

When man still possessed the Group-soul, existence went on from generation to generation, no interruption was caused through birth and death. Then this interruption appeared and with it the possibility of reincarnation. Earlier, the son was but a direct continuation of the father, the father of the grandfather, consciousness did not break off. Now there came a time when there was darkness beyond birth and death, and a sojourn in Kamaloca and Devachan first became possible. This interchange, this sojourn in higher worlds, could only come about at all after individualisation, after the expulsion of Sun and Moon. Only then appeared what today we call incarnation, and at the same time this intermediate state, which again will one day also come to an end.

Thus we have reached the period in which we have seen the earlier dual-sexed organism, representing a kind of group-soul, divide into a male and a female, so that the similar is reproduced through the female, what is varied and dissimilar through the male. We see in our humanity the feminine to be the principle which still preserves the old conditions of folk and race, and the masculine that which continually breaks through these conditions, splits them up and so individualises mankind. There is actually active in the human being an ancient feminine principle as group-soul and a new masculine principle as individualising element. It will come about that all connections of race and family stock will cease to exist, men will become more and more different from one another, interconnection will no longer depend on the common blood, but on what binds soul to soul. That is the course of human evolution.

In the first Atlantean races there still existed a strong bond of union and the first sub-races grouped themselves according to their colouring. This group-soul element we have still in the races of different colour. These differences will increasingly disappear as the individualising element gains the upper hand. A time will come when there will no longer be races of different colour; the difference between the races will have disappeared, but on the other hand there will be the greatest differences between individuals. The further we go back into ancient times the more we meet with the encroachment of the racial element; the true individualising principle begins as a whole only in later Atlantean times. Among the earlier Atlanteans members of one race actually experienced a deep antipathy for members of another race; the common blood caused the feeling of connection, of love; it was considered against morality to marry a member of another stock.

If, as seer, you wished to examine the connection between the etheric body and the physical body in the old Atlanteans you would make a remarkable discovery. Whereas in the man of today the etheric head is practically covered by the physical part of the head and only protrudes slightly beyond it, in the old Atlantean the etheric head projected far out beyond the physical head; in particular it projected powerfully in the region of the forehead. Now we must think of a point in the physical brain in the place between the eyebrows, only about a centimetre lower, and a second point in the etheric head which would correspond to this. In the Atlantean these two points were still far apart and evolution consisted precisely in the fact that they continually approached each other. In the fifth Atlantean period the point of the etheric head drew in to the physical brain and by reason of these two points coming together there developed what we possess to-day: calculation, counting, the capacity of judging, the power of forming ideas in general, intelligence. Formerly the Atlanteans had only an immensely developed memory, but as yet no logical intellect. Here we have the starting point for the consciousness of the “ego.” A self-reliant independence did not exist in the Atlantean before these two points coincided, on the other hand he could live in much more intimate contact with nature. His dwellings were put together by what was given by nature; he moulded the stones and bound them together with the growing trees. His dwellings were formed out of living nature, were really transformed natural objects. He lived in the little tribes that were still preserved through blood relationship, whilst a powerful authority was exercised by the strongest, who was the chieftain. Everything depended on authority, which however was exercised in a way peculiar to those times.

When man entered on the Atlantean Age, he could as yet utter no articulate speech; this was only developed during that period. A chieftain could not have given commands in speech, but on the other hand these men had the faculty of understanding the language of nature. Present day man has no idea of this, he must learn it again. Picture, for instance, a spring of water which reflects your image to you. As occultist a peculiar feeling emerges in your soul. You say—My image presses towards me out of this spring, to me this is a last token of how on old Saturn everything was reflected out into space. The memory of Saturn arises in the occultist when he beholds his reflection in the spring. And in the echo which the spoken sound gives back arises the recollection of how on Saturn all that resounded into cosmic space, came back as echo. Or you see a Fata Morgana a mirage in the air, in which the air seems to have taken up whatever pictures are imprinted in it and then reflects them again. As occultist you see here a memory of the Sun-period, when the gaseous Sun took in all that came to it from cosmic space, worked it over, and then let it stream back, giving it its own sun-nature at the same time. On the Sun planet you would have seen how things were prepared as Fata Morgana, as a kind of mirage within the gases of the Sun condition. Thus without being a magician one learns to grasp the world from many aspects and that is an important means towards developing into higher worlds. In ancient times man understood nature to a high degree.

There is a great difference between living in an atmosphere like the present and such as it was in Atlantis. The air was then saturated by immense vapour masses; sun and moon were surrounded by a gigantic rainbow halo. There was a time when the mist-masses were so dense that no eye could have seen the stars, when sun and moon were stiff darkened. Only gradually they became visible to man. This coming into sight of sun, moon and stars is magnificently described in records of the Creation. What is described there has really taken place, and much more besides.

The understanding of surrounding nature was still very vividly present in the Atlantean. All that sounds in the rippling of the spring, in the storm of winds, and is an inarticulate sound to you today, was heard by the Atlantean as a speech he understood. There were at that time no commandments, but the Spirit pierced through the vapour-drenched air and spoke to man. The Bible expresses this in the words “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” The human being heard the Spirit from surrounding objects; from sun, moon and stars the Spirit spoke to him and you find in those words—in the Bible a plain expression for what took place in man's environment.

Then came the time in which an especially advanced portion of the human race, who lived in a region which today is on the bed of the ocean in the neighbourhood of present Ireland, first experienced that definite union with the etheric body and thus an increase of the intelligence. This portion of humanity began to journey eastwards under the guidance of the most advanced leader while gradually immense volumes of water submerged the continent of Atlantis. The advanced portion of these peoples journeyed right into Asia, and there founded the centre of the civilisation that we call the Post-Atlantean Culture. From this centre civilisation radiated out; it proceeded from the groups of people who later moved farther to the east. There in Central Asia they founded in India the first civilisation, which still had an echo of the culture attained in Atlantis. The ancient Indian had not yet such a consciousness as we have today, but the capacity for it arose when these two points of the brain of which I have spoken coincided. Before this union there still lived a picture-consciousness in the Atlantean, through which he saw Spiritual beings. In the murmuring of the fountain he not only heard a clear language, but the Undine, who has her embodiment in the water, rose for him out of the spring: in the currents of air he saw Sylphs; in the flickering fire he saw the Salamanders. All this he saw and from it have arisen the myths and legends which have been preserved with most purity in the parts of Europe where there remained remnants of those Atlanteans who did not reach India. The Germanic Sagas and Myths are the relics of what was still seen by the old Atlanteans within the vapoury masses. The rivers, the Rhine, for instance, lived in the consciousness of these old Atlanteans as if the wisdom, which was in the mists of ancient Nivelheim had been cast down into their waters. This wisdom seemed to them to be in the rivers, it lived within them as the Rhine Nixies or similar beings.

So here in these regions of Europe lived echoes of the Atlantean culture, but over in India another arose, that still showed remembrances of that picture world. That world itself had sunk from sight, but the longing for what was revealed in it lived on in the Indian. If the Atlantean had heard the voice of Nature's wisdom, to the Indian there remained the longing for the oneness with Nature, and thus the character of this old Indian culture is shown in the desire to fall back into that time where all this was man's natural possession. The ancient Indian was a dreamer. To be sure, what we call reality lay spread all around him, but the world of the senses was “Maya” in his eyes. What the old Atlantean still saw as hovering spirits was what the Indian sought in his longing for the spiritual content of the world, for Brahma. And this kind of going back towards the old dream-like consciousness of the Atlantean has been preserved in the Oriental training to bring back this early consciousness.

Farther to the north we have the Medes and Persians, the original Persian civilisation. Whereas the Indian culture turns sharply away from reality, the Persian is aware that he must reckon with it. For the first time man appears as a worker, who knows that he is not merely to strive for knowledge with his spiritual forces, but that he is to use them for shaping the earth. At first the earth met him as a sort of hostile element which he must overcome, and this opposition was expressed in Ormuzd and Ahriman, the good and the bad divinity, and the conflict between them. Men wished more and more to let the spiritual world flow into the terrestrial world, but as yet they could recognise no law, no laws of nature within the outer world. The old Indian culture had in truth a knowledge of higher worlds, but not on the grounds of a natural science, since everything on the Earth was accounted Maya; the Persian learnt to know nature purely as a field of labour.

We then come to the Chaldean, the Babylonian and the Egyptian peoples. Here man learnt to recognise a law in nature itself. When he looked up to the stars he sought behind them not the gods alone, but he examined the laws of the stars and hence arose that wonderful science which we find among the Chaldeans. The Egyptian priest did not look on the physical as an opposing force, but he incorporated the spiritual which he found in geometry into his soil, his land; outer nature was recognised as conforming to law. The external star-knowledge was inwardly united in Chaldean-Babylonian-Egyptian wisdom with the knowledge of the gods who ensoul the stars. That was the third stage of cultural evolution.

It is only in the fourth stage of post-Atlantean evolution that man advances to the point of incorporating in civilisation that which he himself experiences as spiritual. This is the case in the Greco-Latin time. Here in the work of art, in moulded matter man imprints his own spirit into substance, whether in sculpture or in the drama. Here too we find the first beginnings of human city planning. These cities differed from those of Egypt in the pre-Grecian age. There in Egypt the priests looked up to the stars and sought their laws, and what took place in the heavens they reproduced in what they built. Thus their towers show the seven-story development which man first discovered in the heavenly bodies; so too do the Pyramids show definite cosmic proportions. We find the transition from priest-wisdom to the real human wisdom wonderfully expressed in early Roman history by the seven Kings of Rome. What are these seven kings?

We remember that the original history of Rome leads back to ancient Troy. Troy represents a last result of the ancient priestly communities who organised states by the laws of the stars. Now comes the transition to the fourth stage of culture. The ancient priest-wisdom is superseded by human cleverness, represented by the crafty Odysseus. Still more plainly is this shown in a picture which can only be rightly understood in this way and which represents how the priest-wisdom has to give way before the human power of judgment. The serpent can always be taken as symbol of human wisdom, and the Laocoon group depicts the overthrow of the priestly wisdom of ancient Troy through human cunning and human wisdom symbolised in the serpents.

Then by the directing authorities who work through millennia the events were outlined that had to happen and in accordance with which history must take its course. Those who stood at the foundation of Rome had already foreordained the sevenfold Roman culture as it stands written in the Sibylline Books. Think it out: you find in the names of the seven Roman kings reminiscences of the seven principles. That goes so far in fact that the fifth Roman king, the Etruscan, comes from without; he represents the principle of Manas, Spirit-Self, which binds the three lower with the three higher. The seven Roman kings represent the seven principles of human nature, spiritual connections are inscribed in them. Republican Rome is none other than the human wisdom, which replaced the ancient priestly wisdom. Thus did the fourth epoch grow within the third. Man sent forth what he had in his soul into the great works of art, into drama and jurisprudence. Formerly all justice was derived from the stars. The Romans became a nation of law-givers because there men created justice, “jus,” according to their own requirements.

We live ourselves in the fifth period. How does the meaning of the totality of evolution come to expression in it? The old authority has vanished, man becomes more and more dependent on his own inner nature, his external acts bear increasingly the stamp of his character. Racial ties lose their hold, man becomes more and more individualised. This is the kernel of the religion which says “He who doth not leave father and mother, brother and sister cannot be my disciple.” This means that all love which is founded on natural ties alone is to come to an end, human beings must stand before one another, and soul find soul.

We have the task of drawing down still further on to the physical plane that which flowed from the soul in Greco-Latin times. Man becomes in this way, a being who sinks deeper and deeper into materiality. If the Greek in his works of art has created an idealised image of his soul-life and poured it into the human form, if the Roman in his jurisprudence has created something that still further signifies personal requirements, then our age culminates in machines, which are solely a materialistic expression of mere personal human needs. Mankind sinks lower and lower from heaven, and this fifth period has descended deepest, is the most involved in matter. If the Greek in his creations has lifted man above man in his images (for Zeus represents man raised above himself), if you find still left in Roman jurisprudence something of man that goes out beyond himself (for the Roman placed more value on being a Roman citizen than on being a person and an individual) then in our period you find people who utilise spirit for the satisfying of their material needs. For what purpose is served by all machines, steamships, railways, all complicated inventions? The ancient Chaldean was accustomed to satisfy his need of food in the simplest way; today an immensity of wisdom, crystalised human wisdom, is expended on the stilling of hunger and thirst. We must not deceive ourselves about this. The wisdom that is so employed has descended below itself right into matter.

All that man had earlier drawn down from the spiritual realms had to descend below itself in order to be able to mount upwards again—and with this our age has received its mission. If in man of an earlier time there flowed blood which bound him with his tribe, today the love which still flowed in the earlier blood shows greater and greater cleavage; a love of a spiritual kind must take its place and then we can ascend again to spiritual realms. There is good reason for us to have come down from spiritual heights, for man must go through this descent in order to find the way up to spirituality out of his own strength. The mission of Spiritual Science is to show mankind this upward path.

We have followed the course of mankind as far as the time in which we ourselves stand; we must now show how it will evolve further, and how one who passes through an initiation can even today forestall a certain stage of humanity on his path of knowledge and wisdom.

We saw last time that the initiatory process is the antithesis of the great world doctrines of the origin of the cosmos in the spiritual sense, and that there is a strict correspondence between the small and the great world, so that we can almost see how the images of Genesis, which have to do with cosmological views, with contemplations of the universe, recur in the history of the Redeemer.

The personality of Christ is to be placed at the center in such a decisive way that it was not only a consequence of the Messiah-consciousness of Christ himself, but that it was also something that lay in the whole time at that time. The whole time had the need to place a personality, a person reborn on the heights of spiritual development, at the center of the whole world view, so that there was a profound need not only among those who founded Christianity, but also in the spirit of the time, not only in the expectation of the Messiah among the Jewish people, but also among the pagan peoples. So there was also an urge to come face to face with this personality, to see him. We see that one or the other could be mistaken for him. Paganism virtually created a counter-image in Apollonius of Tyana. He is perhaps as interesting a figure in paganism as Socrates, Plato and so on. But he still has a special interest in that a pagan-human deity was to be tendentiously created, which was to be contrasted with Christ. There is, however, a clear difference between the world of thought associated with Christ and that associated with Apollonius of Tyana. Apollonius is seen more as a man loved by God. Basically, it is the same view that emerged from the Jewish consciousness. I would say, from the pagan point of view, while the deity is emphasized more in Christ, in Apollonius it is said more that he is a man who has come to divinity, a man loved by God, not a god.

And this man loved by God appears to us only as a later development of Socrates, of Plato. [Just as Plato had a special relationship with the god of medicine, Asclepius, the son of Apollo, so did Apollonius:] He was a healer, a sage, and likewise prophecy is said to have been one of his gifts. These ideas were formed from Pythagorean ideas. Just as these live on in the people, following in secret, mystical connection, Apollonius was imagined to be the reborn Plato, a savior.

We are told of Apollonius that he traveled far and wide, seeking less to enrich his own wisdom - which was available to him as he was at a higher stage of reincarnation - than to connect the various religions through a spiritual bond. A cosmopolitan [religion-uniting activity] is attributed to him. He is said to have been with the Indians, Persian magicians and Egyptian priests. Among the Indian sages he was immediately recognized as a deified personality. We are also told that he got to know the Egyptian religion in its various forms, but that he was able to tell the Egyptian priests more than they could tell him. He was able to tell them that they should have their religious ideas about India. He was able to show them their own in the Indian. Thus we see how Apollonius endeavored to see the common ground in the various religions, and so he appears to us at this time as the bearer of a real theosophical striving. He set himself the task of searching for the common ground in all religions. Therefore, when we delve into his teaching, it appears to us as an extract from all the religious teachings existing at that time. He had collected the extract from all of them. It is also a mature teaching. The idea of reincarnation appears to us to have been fertilized in the old Pythagorean sense.

He speaks of the popular religions as an external symbol of what it is really supposed to be. Apollonius draws attention to a very important idea that he can only have drawn from pagan mysticism. He draws attention to the fact that in the various acts of worship performed with the mystic, we are not only dealing with events that represent the world process, but that we are also dealing with the representation of phenomena of nature in symbolic acts. Apollonius therefore presents us with a highly important concept that leads us into the relationship that exists between Christianity and the time. He shows that everything we can see around us and also what is in the starry sky, the stars, can be regarded as a symbol, that all this is nothing other than a symbol of spiritual processes that dominate the world cosmos. Those who heard my lecture on Goethe's "Faust" the day before yesterday will remember that something similar was said there: Everything external, "everything transient is only a parable". This is what Apollonius says. But it is the common view of the entire age at that time.

I must draw attention here to a misunderstanding which consists in the belief that this great symbolism between the small and the great world, between man and the small world occurrences and the great world mysteries is a product of the imagination. In our nineteenth century this doctrine has developed. We see in the popular religions the fairy tale that creates religion, the imagination that creates religion, which personifies the processes [in nature] in the circle of air, lightning, thunder and so on in manifold ways and forms gods for itself. The laws that the stars obey are seen as the expression of a divine-spiritual world order. But within the actual priestly theosophy there was the conviction that when the sun is followed as it moves across the celestial vault, it is not only the process of moving across the celestial vault that is to be seen. This process is only a symbol for the process taking place behind it. That which the popular imagination originally possessed in an exoteric way was later taught as a symbol by the priest. But he saw in the laws - we know that there was a highly developed astronomy in the Assyrian empire - he did not see in the laws the dry naturalistic law, he saw in them the language of the deity, only a symbol for the deeper spiritual process.

For Apollonius of Tyana, the subordinate folk symbolism was only one stage. The initiate was later given a higher parable. David Friedrich Strauss, Darwin and so on were wrong in saying that the imagination [of the people] had imagined the lightning passing through the clouds as a divine fact, that it had then progressed from that to the gods, to the god Zeus and so on. But these were only ideas of the imagination, of popular mythology. In this way they have stripped away everything religious. The [scientific] truth has taken its place. But this matter has never been represented [in this way] within the mystical teachings. Even if there was an ascent from [the ideas of] popular religion to the scientific investigation of the course of the stars, the divine was first sought behind the phenomena. Not that which man absorbed within himself was to be a symbol for the external process, no, just the opposite. The whole of nature itself became a parable. In the mysticism of those centuries we have to do with exactly the opposite of what the materialistic scholars of the nineteenth century imagine. They believe that what the ancients thought up was only a parable. No, it is just the opposite. The scientific idea is only a parable for what lies behind it.

Oriental scholars knew that Christianity drew from the same source as they did. They therefore long regarded Christianity only as a Persian sect.

However, this whole context of the theosophical doctrine of the whole world as a parable for the eternal divine [...] confronts us clearly and particularly deeply in the Apocalypse, which is nothing other than an interpretation of the older mysteries in Christian terms.

But first I have to say something in advance. I said that the whole of external nature was regarded as a parable, as was the case with Assyrian-Babylonian or Persian scholars. They had a precise idea of the laws to be observed in the course of the stars. This will also be clear to other circles because you have heard Professor Delitzsch's lecture on "Babel and the Bible". I could have started from Asian ideas, you find the same thing everywhere. If science now unearths things of which Theosophy must claim otherwise for other reasons, we will nevertheless see confirmation through the excavations of Babylonian antiquities. One finds the results of the excavations compiled in an easy and fine manner by this Professor Delitzsch. I said that from Oriental priestly religions a part of the views emerged which regarded nature as a parable for the eternal divine. You can understand this if you look at the oriental religions. The Egyptians attached more importance to great monuments and laid them down on the outside, while the Orientals sought the parable more in the [theoretical].

When we follow the literature of the pagan writers, we see how the awareness becomes clearer and clearer that in the teachings of astronomy we are dealing with a language for the eternal word of the gods in the world. I only wish to draw attention to a few facts which will make the whole matter clearer. [In the writer Apollonius of Rhodes], then also in Plutarch - although there only sparsely - one finds precise references to this and to the world of legends - such as the legend of Heracles, the legend of the Golden Fleece - and so on, which I have already dealt with earlier. But we can also see from their writers that these legends also presented themselves to the first Christians in such a way that they concealed great world truths.

We see that the sun, in its annual course, in its annual movement, is a symbol of the eternally changing, sinking and renewing world. Given the brevity of time, I can only hint at what the main point is. It is not without reason that the twelve labors of Heracles have been related to the twelve constellations of the zodiac. It is a repetition of what happens in the sky above. The upper and lower correspond to each other.

When we follow these views, we find that great importance is attached to the fact that the sun, the god of light, was worshipped with the annual arrival of spring - just as in theosophy, which sees light symbolized in the sun and truth in the light. It was not the sun itself that was worshipped, but the sun was only a symbol. With the rejuvenating sun, it was seen as a symbol of eternally reborn nature, of spiritual rebirth, of the God who renews himself again and again.

What the Egyptians saw in the firmament is also seen in the sun renewing itself in spring. And the fact that the sun [in spring] is in the sign of the lamb, the ram, means that the sun gains power in the world order through the lamb. This becomes a symbol for the world redeemer. This is why we encounter the lamb, which signifies the rebirth of the sun in spring, the rebirth of the new God. This is why the beginning of spring was also referred to as the point at which the young god is born. The virgin at Sais gives birth to the new god Heracles.

Where the legends are not completely correct, we can prove where the changes came from. The same legends are interpreted by pagan writers in the same way, namely that nothing else can be found in them than what can also be read in the sky. The mystics of that time saw the serpent in the sky as a symbol of the downfall of the god in dark matter. The passage of the sun in the snake symbolizes this. On December 21, in the middle of winter, when the days are getting longer, the sun enters the constellation of Sagittarius. In the middle of winter, Virgo receives the child. Easter is actually the resurrection, the redemption. There the sun enters the constellation of the Lamb of Aries. In summer we have the lion reflected in the course of the sun. What takes place in the individual personalities first took place in the celestial vault. Seen in this way, the course of life of the individual personalities is a mystery of the eternal course of the world. Also in the Greek mysteries, also in the Orient and in Persia, [Zeus] transforms himself into the Golden Fleece at this time.

So we see that the passage of the sun through Aries is given to us as a resurrection festival. Nonnos] mentions a relationship between Zeus and his son Dionysus. He is to ascend to his father and sit at his father's right hand. Here you have the pagan version of the Christian creed. Christianity means the new form of the teachings of paganism. A large number of Christians can be shown to have been inspired by pagan mysticism. These ideas appear again and again in Christianity. There is an indication even in Christianity that isolated spirits of paganism have turned to Christianity and then sought a symbolic expression for the fact that they were able to understand Christianity all the more. The expression can be found in the Gospel, namely that magicians follow the stars to find Christ. They read the stars, and all they had to do was follow what they read in the stars. After following [the star], they see what is given to Christianity. Christianity is represented there in a single person. That is why the Indian scholar said: "In Christianity, we are dealing with nothing other than a Persian sect."

If you take the sun myth and try to translate it into the personal as the course of life of a single personality, then you can say nothing other than that the Christians sought the truth in a humanized way, which was previously sought in the firmament.

The fact that at Easter time the sun passes through the constellation of the Lamb, the Ram, is quite natural [for that time]. At other, earlier times, the Lamb was replaced by Taurus, Gemini, Cancer and so on. This has to do with the fact that these ideas were formed at a time when the position of the constellations was different [from today]. They are always shifting. Our astronomical data is also no longer correct today. So we can say that this Christianity was actually born out of the ancient mysteries and religions. This is not a degradation, but merely shows that it was a necessity of the times.

I have shown how the individual teachings in the Orient are already pre-formed. What interests us in particular, however, is how they are incorporated into the Apocalypse. If one does not grasp the basic idea in this way, it cannot be understood. It cannot be understood that the world of imagination, the sum of [religious] feelings, was already present and reappears in a new form in Christianity. The author [of the Apocalypse] was aware of this. He did not want to reproduce anything other than the old mystical mysteries. He says that everything he has read from the starry world has now taken place as a direct experience in the life of an individual personality. What you previously only saw as cosmic-historical events has become the life of an individual person. That is the basic idea of the Apocalypse. We see how the old priestly concepts confront us in all the descriptions: the seven trumpets, the seven seals and so on. In all this we see nothing other than the expression of ancient, long-existing mysteries, and what is presented to us in the Apocalypse is nothing other than the fulfillment of these things in Christianity. At one point I will show how this old teaching is presented to us there and how the new teaching is then brought into connection with it, how the new teaching develops out of the old. I will deal with the earlier chapters later. First the whole passage from the middle.

The 11th chapter: Measuring the temple of God. Two witnesses killed and alive again. [Gap in the transcript] The seventh trumpet.

"1 And there was given me a reed like a rod, and he said, Arise, and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein. (2) But the court outside the temple, throw it out and do not measure it. For it has been given to the nations, and they will trample the holy city underfoot for forty-two months. 003 And I will give unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth. 004 These are the two olive trees and the torches that stand before the Lord of the earth: 005 And if any man will hurt them, fire shall proceed out of their mouth, and shall devour their enemies: and if any man will hurt them, he shall be put to death. 006 These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy: and they have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will. 007 And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war with them, and shall overcome them, and kill them. 008 And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified. 009 And some of the nations and kindreds and tongues shall see their dead bodies three days and an half, and shall not leave their dead bodies in graves. 10th And they that dwell on the earth shall rejoice over them, and shall live well, and shall send gifts one to another: for these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth." - Being born again is nothing other than being born again in the initiation process. - 11 "And after three days and a half the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon those who saw them. 12 And they heard a great voice from heaven saying to them, 'Come up here! And they ascended into heaven in a cloud, and saw their enemies. 013 And the same hour was there a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell: and in the earthquake were slain seven thousand names of men: and the rest were afraid, and gave glory to the God of heaven. 014 The second woe is past; behold, the third woe cometh quickly. 015 And the seventh angel sounded, and there were great voices in heaven, saying: The kingdoms of the world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever."

It is to be described here that, whereas previously only the individual was permitted, now the Good News is to be brought to all people through Christ.

The 12th chapter: The woman clothed with the sun and the dragon. Michael's conflict with him: "1 And there appeared a great sign in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. 002 And she was with child, and cried out in travail, and was in great pain in childbirth. 003 And there appeared another sign in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. 004 And his tail drew away the third part of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth. Then the dragon stood before the woman who was to give birth, so that when she gave birth he might devour her child. 005 And she brought forth a son, a little child, which should feed all nations with a rod of iron. And her child was caught up to God and to his throne. 6 And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared of God, that she may be nourished there a thousand two hundred and threescore days. 007 And there was a battle in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon fought with his angels. 008 And they prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. 009 And the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. 010 And I heard a great voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ; because that accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before God day and night. 011 And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony, and loved not their lives unto the death. 12 Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell therein. Woe to those who dwell on the earth and on the sea! For the devil cometh down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time. 013 And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman which brought forth the man child. 014 And the woman was given two wings like a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness to her place, where she would be nourished for a time and times and half a time before the face of the serpent. 015 And the serpent cast out of his mouth water like a flood after the woman, that he might drown her. 016 But the earth helped the woman, and opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth. 17 And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ."

The stream from the serpent's mouth symbolizes nothing other than the element through which man must return in order to find his way back to God.

The 13th chapter: Seven-headed beast from the sea. "001 And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. 002 And the beast that I saw was like a pardel, and his feet were like the feet of a bear, and his mouth like the mouth of a lion. And the dragon gave him his power and his throne and great authority. 003 And I saw one of his heads as if it had a deadly wound, and his deadly wound was healed. And the whole earth marveled at the beast, 4. and they worshiped the dragon that gave power to the beast, and worshiped the beast, saying: Who is like the beast, and who can war with him? 005 And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and it was given unto him to continue with him forty and two months. 006 And he opened his mouth to blaspheme against God, and to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven. 007 And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations. 008 And all that dwell on the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. 009 If any man have an ear, let him hear. 010 If any man lead into prison, he shall go into prison: if any man kill with the sword, he shall be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and faith of the saints."

Two-horned beast from the earth.

"11 And I saw another beast come up out of the earth, having two horns like a lamb, and speaking as a dragon. 012 And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. 013 And he doeth great signs, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven in the sight of men: 014 And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast, saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live. 015 And it was given unto him to give the spirit to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. 016 And he made the small and the great, the rich and the poor, the free and the bond, all put a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, 017 so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of his name. 18 Here is wisdom! Let him who has understanding consider the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is six hundred and sixty-six."

The secret of the mysteries was generalized, was brought to all people. This can be clearly seen in the symbol in the Apocalypse of the four beasts and the three powers that are above the beasts, so that we are confronted by seven powers. We are then told that ten kings, the kings of the new kingdom, will overcome these seven old powers. Now we have to see what all this means.

First I would like to develop it as it has been stated in the ancient mysteries. Then you will realize it for yourself. The Apocalypse sees the world and man as made up of seven principles. The four lower or inferior principles or powers are represented by the four beasts. These must be overcome. By overcoming the lower, the three upper ones are built up. After this has been presented to us, we are shown how the entire seven-membered nature of the world and of man is scorched in fire, that the divine lightning strikes and that the entire material, in which the seven-membered nature is immersed, is once again overcome. The eighth stage is when the actual material, the evil, really perishes. We are then shown that in addition to the three spiritual elements, the fourth physical element appears as an overcomer; the fourth physical element is seized by the three spiritual elements and then also the three lower ones. The fourth element is man himself. Eagle, [bull], lion and man. Man represents nothing other than KamaRupa. The fourth, the human being, combines the three lower physical elements and the three upper ones and gives birth to three new ones from the three physical elements. The physical elements are spiritually reborn, as it were. So we have ten elements instead of seven. This is what the Apocalypse wants to depict with the ten kings.

These are ancient mystical teachings, nothing other than what pagan ideas already knew. From the transformation and victory of the ten kings, we can see that they represent nothing other than the victory of the spiritual over the material, the victory of the Mystery Doctrine.

At the opening of the first six seals, John saw four horses, a white horse, a red horse, a black horse and a pale horse. Death and hell followed them. "And when the fifth seal was opened, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held." This killing symbolizes being born again in the spirit and the killing of the lower nature. Man must devour the book, he must become one with the book. The same is also indicated by a Christian mystic, Angelus Silesius. He said: ["Friend, it is enough. If you want to read more, go and become the scripture and the being yourself."] - With this he concludes his "Cherubinischer Wandermann".

The ancient mysteries were a preparation for Christianity. They were reborn through the Lamb. Those who cannot fully comprehend that they have to go further, that they actually have to seek bodily death and spiritual resurrection in Christ, are not yet mature. They are the ones who are to be admonished.

The Apocalypse is one of the most important books of the New Testament. It must not and cannot be understood in any other way than that we see in it a fusion of the Christian mystery truths with the ancient mysteries. It contains the ancient mysteries born out of Christianity.

Human beings are dwellers in two worlds. Our uniqueness amongst the creatures of the earth lies in this role that we have as half beast and half angel. A dynamic tension exists because of the contrary demands which living in each of these realms places on us. We experience this on a daily basis, an internal tug-of-war, pulling first in one direction, then to the opposite pole. Whenever we are called upon to make a choice, a decision, the earthly and the heavenly draw us one way or the other and often both at once!

A long held view has been that, of course, one should always give way to the heavenly or spiritual; the alternative is to succumb to the earthly, the fallen, to evil. The struggle has been portrayed as white versus black, as good versus evil. The enduring legacy of this attitude has been to deem the earthly, the bodily nature of the human being as soiled, unclean, corrupt, shameful. With this view the spiritual aspirant of the past had no choice but to reject the body, the earth. In India incarnating into a physical body has long been considered a curse, the entering into the “veil of tears” which constitutes life.

The physical body was especially singled out for punishment, to be starved and tortured, purged and scourged. St. Francis derided his body as his “donkey,” but reluctantly acknowledged that he must give it some care if it was to continue carrying him about. The medieval Cathars saw the human body as a pit into which the devil had lured the souls of weakened angels. Procreation was thus looked upon with horror as an act of unwitting cruelty—each new birth dragged a heavenly soul into the fallen world of matter, bringing another diabolically corrupt angel into the flesh. Even to study the physical body too closely was suspect, hence Leonardo's need for secrecy in dissection of corpses. The accumulation of an inordinate amount of the material realm in the form of wealth has also been rather suspect.

Such views have persisted on varying levels into modern times, and not just amongst the puritanical or the late Victorian. Sigmund Freud had difficulty, as a scientist, in acknowledging an angelic side in his patients. He reframed the conflict as one involving human bodily nature and the probably superstitious religious and moral beliefs they maintain. This wrestling match between the instinctual id and the moralistic superego was refereed by the central ego.

Later psychologists have continued to use this framework of two opposing forces moderated by the central force of an ego (though they all interpret the ego somewhat differently). Gestalt psychologists very pragmatically focus on how an individual becomes caught in this struggle between the two poles, without worrying about the relative merits of either pole—what is important is to get the individual “unstuck,” to empower the central ego to again be able to choose, to act more decisively through becoming conscious of its dilemma. The Italian psychiatrist, Robert Assagioli, wrote of the pull between the lower and higher unconscious, once again recognizing an earth/heaven dichotomy. He developed a therapy that sought a “psychosynthesis” of the two opposing forces, paving the way for the discovery of one's unifying center. Similarly, Carl Jung described the marriage of Eros and Logos within the soul, with the sometimes alchemical participation of the ego.

Some of these more spiritually inclined psychologists share with Rudolf Steiner the recognition that it is a synthesis of the two poles and not the choosing of one over the other that frees us for self-development. Humanity has both an earthly and a heavenly mission, tasks in the outer world as well as the inner, necessitating an acceptance, an embracing of both our natures.

In examining this predicament of living in two worlds, Rudolf Steiner, by virtue of his capacity for spiritual research, went much further than previous researchers. Steiner was able not merely to speak of opposing psychological forces, but to relate these specifically to the influence of mighty spiritual beings, Lucifer and Ahriman. The influence of these beings is not to be thought of as limited to the realm of the soul but rather taken in the widest context as encompassing human evolution, history, and almost every aspect of our existence.

The name Lucifer comes from the Latin meaning “bearer of the Light.” One's childhood picture of Lucifer as a slithering manifestation of evil is difficult to reconcile with the beauty of this name. Lucifer, however, represents a force that paradoxically can combine beauty and if you will, beauty gone too far, to the extreme of decadence, hence to evil.

In the Greek legend, Icarus and his father Daedalus escape from the tower of their island prison with wings fashioned of wax. Despite his father's warning, Icarus becomes enamored of his newfound power and of the beauty of the Sun; he flies up to the light (and heat), his wings melt, and he falls to his death. The wiser and more restrained Daedalus keeps his flight balanced between heaven and earth, thus succeeding in his escape from bondage. The Greeks were very aware of the temptation of Lucifer—in most of their tales of tragedy, “hubris” or overweening pride was the source of a hero's downfall.

In Rudolf Steiner's sculpture, the Representative of Humanity, Lucifer is portrayed as an exceedingly handsome and powerful winged form. Despite his having fallen from Heaven, he was nevertheless, an angel, a leader of angels. As the Light Bearer he has particular gifts for humankind, especially that of wisdom, the gift he first offered to Adam and Eve. By their eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, Lucifer promised that they would “be as gods.” Like Icarus, they were not yet prepared for such a gift and ignoring warnings to the contrary, they accepted it and fell from Paradise. In this example it should be noted that the gift in and of itself is not evil. As in our earlier psychological examples, neither the heavenly nor the earthly is of itself to be seen as either absolutely desirable or absolutely forbidden. The beings of the polarities actually have something of value to offer to humanity. This is very different from the traditional view of the Devil's offerings! However, an individual must be inwardly prepared for the reception of these gifts if they are to be of any value. The hallucinogenic drug user is open to receiving Luciferic light and often feels quite wise when in the midst of the drug experience. Without the meditative discipline of the serious student of the spirit, however, the contact with those realms is rarely beneficial and, in fact, is often quite harmful.

In this century, society has especially interested itself in the material. Partially in response to the excessive rejection of the earth and the body, and of the authoritarianism which maintained this position, we have now fully entered the realm of matter, with head, heart, and soul. Whereas in former times humankind was more dreamy in its consciousness and thus more prone to the Luciferic realm of fantasy, illusion, and superstitious thinking, modern consciousness tends to the concrete, to materialism. The belief only in what can be ascertained by the physical senses (and the instruments which extend those senses) binds us to the earth and to the influence of the being named Ahriman.

Aingra Mainu, or Ahriman, was first spoken of in the Zoroastrianism of ancient Persia. He was the evil god, the lord of lies who tempted men and women to believe that they were solely earthly beings. At a time in history when the clairvoyance which had once been common was becoming rare, the ethical teachings of Zarathustra sought to remind the people of their divine origin and to teach through the revelation he had received of the Lord of the Sun, Ahura Mazda.

The influence of Ahriman has grown through the centuries, quietly gaining respectability in the age of the Renaissance and flourishing in our own century as the predominant worldview. Only in the last years has there been any serious questioning of the notion that the only reality is the physical one. For the most part the realm of soul and spirit has been dismissed. The prevailing scientific view has been that only what can be weighed, measured, or quantified should merit serious attention. Ahriman has welcomed statistics as his handmaid.

At the beginning of the century, the Russian philosopher, Vladimir Soloviev, warned of this danger in his “A Short Narrative about Anti-Christ.” In this fictional essay Soloviev described the appearance of a great individual who taught world peace and became first the World Leader, and later the reuniter of the world's religions. He is a vegetarian and anti-vivisectionist and brings great material prosperity and physical comfort to all who acknowledge his authority, all of this without effort on the people's part. The world becomes peaceful, even docile, for the minor sacrifice of individuality and freedom.

The influence of Ahriman is seen in the generous gifts that he has bestowed on humankind in the past centuries and for which we must feel very grateful. All of the technological marvels which science has made possible have given many of us relative freedom from all manner of drudgery while maintaining a high standard of living, freeing us to pursue other interests, giving us more time ... or do we have more time? The great difficulty with our acceptance of Ahriman's bounty has been our relative blindness and lack of foresight as we have lost ourselves in its enjoyment. The birth of the ecology movement and discussion of the reductionist nature of science has wakened some consciousness of the danger into which we have strayed. Some awareness has arisen as to what we are sacrificing in the Faustian bargain which society has struck, a sacrifice which involves our very humanity.

Through Darwin's theory of evolution as well as through Freud's positing of the sexual as the primary motive of humankind, the idea that we are no more than “naked apes” has become quite accepted. To this instinctual or animalistic picture of the human, science has added the model of the human being as machine, with the brain as computer. With such a confining definition of humanity, is it any wonder that we have increasingly come to act and to see ourselves as just machines, or just animals?

The challenge for the individual is often not how to face either Ahriman or Lucifer, but how not to be torn asunder in the encounter with both forces. In T.S. Eliot's play, Murder in the Cathedral, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas a Becket, is conducted to an examination of himself and his past by a succession of four Tempters. The first three attempt to win him with the Ahrimanic enticements of pleasures of the senses, good fellowship, and temporal power for himself and for his Church. Becket turns away from these three only to be approached by a fourth Tempter, clad like himself as a priest and tonsured. The Luciferic temptation now offered is the most dangerous and difficult for Becket, the whisper of spiritual pride—to die in order to attain immortality on earth, to envisage the saint's tomb being visited by pilgrims for centuries, to stand high within the ranks in heaven. Only with difficulty does Becket turn away from these “higher vices.”

In Rudolf Steiner's sculpture, a strong figure stands with one clenched hand upraised to the beautiful Lucifer, the other hand stretched downward to the twisted and sclerotic Ahriman. The Representative of Humanity stands heroically, holding at bay and in balance the two opposing forces, centered within the “Third Force,” that force which we recognize in ourselves in the word ‘I’.

In this series of lectures, Rudolf Steiner strives to deepen our understanding of the two opposing forces, to alert us especially to the dangers of Ahriman, whose wiles have lulled us into a soporific state. The intent, however, is not to drive us to obsession over Luciferic or Ahrimanic demons, but rather to remind us, to reawaken us to our true center. In the words of Henry David Thoreau, “We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical means, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us even in our soundest sleep.” We recognize that dawn in the figure of the risen Christ who stands for all of us as the “Representative of Humanity” in the modern struggle for the kernel of our being.

Thomas Poplawski