The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The time has now come to make known in wider circles that which has been spoken of throughout the history of the evolution of mankind under the name of the Mysteries or Mysticism, the so-called Esoteric Wisdom.

For in the soul of man, behind what comes to the light of day lies a deeper wisdom which has hitherto remained unknown to mankind in general.

Let us be quite clear what it is men have always understood by the term “Mysteries” or the “esoteric.” All that has been brought about in the world through civilisation goes back ultimately to a few great personalities, a few leading individuals. For example, a construction like the Simplon tunnel can be traced back to the mental work of great individuals, who were not themselves directly concerned with the building of the tunnel but who made it possible, by their Intellectual discoveries, for others to build it.

The “practical” man would perhaps be of the opinion that such things are accomplished by an activity that is purely external. It would be the very greatest mistake to accede to such an opinion. Neither the engineers who conceived the plan, nor the workmen who carried it out, are the spiritual originators. If it were not for what is called Higher Mathematics as elaborated by Leibnitz, Newton and others, such works could never be there at all. These thinkers were necessary in order to bring into being what is called “technics.” If we go to the root of the matter, we shall find that such works could never have been achieved, nor any goods have been manufactured, without the soul of the Thinker.

If this is so with regard to the outer materialistic culture, it is true in still greater measure of the spiritual currents that flow through human history.

All the Religion and all the Art that has ever been brought to mankind, all the Justice that has ever borne rule in states, all the order and Morality that has lived among men leads back to great Initiates, leads back to hidden sources of Wisdom. This is what we find when we set out to look for the deeper origin of things.

Consider the works of Art which have succeeded each other through the centuries, and you will find that they can all be traced back to deeper sources. Whether we take a poet like Dante, or a mind and spirit like Goethe's, or a painter such as Raphael, or again some great religious event in history—all moral and religious streams, all art and all science, lead back into the hidden places, where was cultivated in secret that which is known as Mysticism or Esotericism.

And as with all other religions so with Christianity too we find its foundations in the esoteric. It is only an evidence of shortsightedness when the objection is raised, that Christianity is for simple hearts and should speak to the feelings and be comprehensible for all. That is a very shortsighted view. All religions, it is true, ultimately clothe their truths in sentences so full of power and impulse that no soul is too simple to receive them. What emerges finally, however, in this simple form, has its origin in the heights, with the so-called Initiates.

Throughout history there have always been Initiates. In ancient India it was the Rishis who taught a primeval Wisdom. In Persia Zarathustra was the teacher of Wisdom. We look to Greece, to Egypt, to Rome, everywhere we find to begin with, a religion of the people, but standing in the midst of the people are always those who may be called spiritual “Giants,” unknown to mankind by name. These are they who formed themselves into occult brotherhoods. Whosoever wished to be accepted into such a brotherhood had to undergo a strict and severe probation. The probation had no immediate relation to the intellectual life. It was far more a question of a man's wrestling his way through to an inner freedom of character, where feelings and passions had no power with him. Then he had to learn not to misuse his knowledge. Men who had passed through severe trials and tests of this nature became missionaries to the rest of mankind. They were not allowed to have any other feeling or purpose in their heart, save only this—to serve and help mankind. They had to be men who would make real the words—“He who would be first among you, let him be the servant of all”—And in intellectual striving also they must never lag behind but always press on to find the Higher Truths.

Today it is frequently said to one who believes in the possibility of knowing the Spiritual Worlds: But we human beings have boundaries to our knowledge. But inside the Mystery circles it was said: Thou has capabilities which slumber in thee; if thou develop them, then canst thou strive through to a Higher Knowledge.

The development a man was enabled to undergo by the training of his inner talents and capacities was called in the Mystery Centres a Second Birth. It was said that such a one experienced on a higher plane what a man born blind experiences here in the world of the senses when he has undergone an operation and can see. This “operation” on the soul, the re-birth in the Spirit, was performed for the Mystics in the Mysteries.

That which was called in the Mysteries the Kingdom of Heaven, into which the Mystic was led, was not in some other place. The Kingdom of the Spiritual World is here where man is. As many worlds are around us as we have ability to realize and grasp. It was no dry and abstract Wisdom that was received in the Mysteries, but a Wisdom which was at the same time Religion and Art.

In the Mysteries of Greece the spiritual eye of the Mystic was opened. It was shown to him how once in primeval times man had been half animal and how the soul had striven upwards to that stage of humanity upon which he now beheld himself. Three stages were shown to him. He saw first forms as they lived in a very distant evolution of mankind, then forms half animal and half man, and finally perfect human forms. These three types of the evolution of mankind stood before him in the Greek Mysteries and they found their expression in Greek sculpture. There was (1) the Zeus type, with the straight nose and with the eyes rounded out upwards; (2) the type of the God Mercury with woolly hair and snub nose; and (3) the type of the Satyr, with quite different eyes, different nose and different corners to the mouth. These three types stand before us in Greek art as an image of the stages of the evolution of mankind. At another time it was shown to the Mystic how the God himself descended into nature, how he evolved upwards through the mineral kingdom, plant kingdom and animal kingdom to the human kingdom and was then born anew out of the human heart. That was called the descent of the God, his Resurrection and his Ascension. The whole process was represented in the Greek drama. All that was represented in the drama came originally from the Mysteries.

Just as the trunk of the tree divides itself into different branches, so did religion, science and art become divided in the Mysteries. The ancient Mysteries which were celebrated in Greece—the Eleusinian—and the Mysteries of the Egyptian Priest-wisdom were called Mysteries of the Spirit. Those who stood high in these Mysteries as teachers and leaders had attained to the spiritual worlds; they associated with Spirits, they had intercourse with Spiritual Beings. Iamblichus shows us how the Gods descended in the Mysteries. Only after moral purification, and only when the intellect had been made clear and lucid, could one obtain admission into these places of wisdom.

This is how it was in the ancient heathen times, in the times of the Mysteries of the Spirit. Never without the most wonderful enthusiasm and the most inward devotion did the Mystics speak of that which could be experienced in the Mystery-schools. Aristides speaks thus: “I thought I touched the God and felt him near, I myself being at the time in a condition between waking and sleeping. My spirit was light, so as none can describe or realise who has not himself been initiated.” And in another passage he says: “It was as if the Spiritual World flowed and poured around me.” Plutarch says, “He who had received initiation in these Mysteries greeted the Godhead with the greeting of eternity.” Whoever had had this experience was called “re-born.”

We must now say a little about what formed the last act in every such Initiation into the Mysteries of the Spirit.

There had first to be the moral purification and the clarifying of the intellect. Then the pupil must learn to see with the eyes of the Spirit. Behind the consciousness which accompanies us through the waking condition, there is another consciousness. This consciousness does not sink into complete darkness when man falls asleep. Man remains conscious at night, he is there present. But the consciousness which accompanies him from morning until evening, that does not remain. There is however a way of overcoming the unconsciousness man has in sleep; there are methods whereby this end can be attained. By a culture of the soul which brings about certain intimate processes in the innermost being of the soul, man can win through to the possibility of finding new revelations in his dream life; he can experience things which he recognises in another way than with the eyes and ears of the senses. It is immaterial whether a man recognizes the truth in sleep or by day when awake; in either case he must learn to carry over into reality the world which he there experiences. When in this way he has come into the position of being able to see the Spiritual in the whole world, then he has attained the first stage of initiation.

At the second stage he has an experience which is like living in a flowing ocean of colour. At this stage there is a higher initiation; a consciousness is developed wherein is revealed to him a still higher Spiritual world. Today in ordinary life man is not capable of awakening the consciousness which lies behind the physical world.

In the last act of the Mysteries of the Spirit the pupil was put into a kind of sleep. Care had been taken in the preparation that when the day consciousness sank down, consciousness did not cease. For three days and three nights the man lay in another state of consciousness in the Mystery temple, citizen and participator in another world. Then he was awakened by the Priest. He received a new name. He was an Initiate, he had been “born again.” One could say of the Mysteries of the Spirit: “Blessed are they who have experienced them, blessed are they who now behold in the Mysteries of the Spirit.”

At the time of Christ Jesus, to the Mysteries of the Spirit were added the Mysteries of the Son, and these have been ever since the time of Christ. The Mysteries of the Father—the Mysteries of the Future—are only cultivated in a very small circle. The Mysteries of the Son are cultivated in the Rosicrucian Mystery which is also Christian, for those who require a Christianity that is armed to meet all Wisdom.

Today we will concern ourselves with the Mysteries of the Son, and see how they differ from the ancient heathen Mysteries. If we would grasp what a mighty step forward has been taken by the coming of Christianity, we must learn to understand two important utterances. The one is: “Blessed are they who believe, even when they do not see,” and the other: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” If we comprehend these utterances in all their depth, then we understand the very foundation of Christianity.

Whilst to the world at large Paul spoke in powerful kindling words, he also gave teachings to his intimate pupils which were transmitted first by word of mouth and then in writing, teachings that are connected with the name of Dionysius, who was known as Dionysius “The Areopagite.” We have here to do with something founded by Saint Paul himself, wherein was proclaimed the deepest wisdom. These teachings of Saint Paul were written down for the first time in the sixth century, in the writings of the so-called Pseudo-Dionysius. It is not so much the historical fact, but the content of these documents which is of interest for us.

An esoteric Christianity does exist. This is not admitted in certain circles, with the result that a peculiar place has been assigned to the Saint John Gospel. The Saint John Gospel is looked upon by theologians as a book which emanated out of poetic genius. They have however no understanding for what the Saint John Gospel means.

Whereas the three other evangelists relate the exoteric. Saint John relates what he experiences as an initiated seer, who could look into the Spiritual worlds. The writer of the Saint John Gospel wrote from the point of view of an initiate. Whoever looks upon it as a book that one should read and understand in the same way as one reads and understands any other book knows nothing of the Saint John Gospel. He alone has knowledge of it who can experience it. Most translators do not render the Spirit of it at all.

The first words of this Gospel, rightly translated, sound as follows:

1. In the primeval beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and with God was the Word.

2. The same was in the primeval beginning with God.

3. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.

4. In Him was the Life and the Life was the Light of men.

5. And the Light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not.

6. There was a man sent from God whose name was John.

7. The same came for a witness to bear witness of the Light, that all might believe on it.

8. He was not the Light, but a witness of the Light.

9. For the true Light which lighteth every man, was to come into the world.

10. It was in the world, and the world was made by It, but the world knew It not.

11. It came into each individual man (even into the ‘I’ man It came) but the individual man (the ‘I’ man) did not receive It.

12. Those who did receive It, through It they could reveal themselves as Children of God.

13. They who trusted in His Name were not born of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of human will, but of God.

14. And the Word became Flesh and dwelt among us and we have heard His Teaching, the Teaching of the only Son of the Father, filled with Grace and Truth.

These words with their mighty content—one should not take them and speculate over them, but rather allow them to work upon one in the same manner as countless human beings have done through the centuries. Early in the morning when the soul was still virginal, they have let these words resound in their soul, up to the passage: “And the Word become Flesh and lived among us ...” as above.

When a man does this day by day, then something shows itself in the soul which gives him new life, he is reborn, he is spiritually transformed. He sees around him a spiritual world of which he had previously no idea.

Everyone who takes the first verses of the Saint John Gospel and lets them work upon him for the education and training of his soul, experiences the Saint John Gospel itself in mighty pictures.

There before his spiritual sight stands John the Baptist, as he baptises the Christ; there he sees the picture of Nicodemus, as he has his conversation with the Christ. He sees how Christ cleanses the Temple, he has before him all the following scenes of the Saint John Gospel, he experiences the “stations” from the thirteenth chapter onwards.

In order for the pupil to receive aright the influence of these words and find the ‘word’ which is proclaimed by the Saint John Gospel, the teacher spoke as follows: “Thou must fill thy soul for weeks at a time with this one feeling. Think of the plant. It is rooted in the dead stone. If it had consciousness, it would have to bow down to the dead stone and say to it: ‘Without thee I could not live; out of thee I drew nourishment and strength: I owe to thee my being, I thank thee.’ The animal would have to speak in similar words to the plant: ‘Without thee I could not live, I incline myself towards thee in thankfulness, because out of thee I draw that which I require for my existence.’ And it is the same with all the kingdom. Man, who has attained to a higher stage of evolution, must also bow down, as the plant to the stone, to those who work for him, and thank them.” He who would become a Christian Initiate must develop this feeling during a period of many weeks—the feeling that he owes gratitude to him who stands beneath him. Then he experiences in the spirit the thirteenth chapter of the Saint John Gospel where this feeling is given sublime and eternal expression by Christ in the Washing of the Feet. Christ means to say: “Without you I could not be, I incline myself to you as the plant to the stone.” As an outer symbol the Initiate experienced at this stage a feeling as if water were flowing around his feet. It continued for a long time.

When he had gone through this, the Christian Mystic could experience the next stage of initiation. For this he must cultivate the power to endure all the storms and stresses of life. Then he experienced a second picture. He saw himself scourged, and could feel in his own body something like pain at certain points. This went on for many weeks. He experienced the scourging.

Now he could rise to the third stage. The teacher said to him: “Thou must cultivate a feeling which can endure that all thou holdest highest should be treated with scorn and derision.” The scorn and derision must be for him nothing, in comparison with his own inner strength and certainty. Then the pupil experienced two symptoms of Christian initiation. He experienced the crowning with thorns; spiritually he saw himself with the crown of thorns and experienced a kind of pain in the head which is the sign of this stage of initiation. Afterwards, as a fourth experience he had to develop the feeling that his body was no more for him than any other object in the world. He carried the body with him only as an instrument. In many Mystery-schools one learned to accustom oneself to speak in the following way: “My body goes through the door,” and so on. In this way the mystic experienced in himself the Crucifixion. He saw himself crucified. The outer symbol was that during the meditation stigmata appeared at the places of the wounds of Christ—in the hands, in the feet and in the right side. This is the blood-trial of the Mystic, the fourth stage of initiation.

After this the pupil rose to the fifth station which is called the mystic death, a sublime experience of a spiritual nature, of which no more than an indication can be given. There are moments for a pupil when the whole of the physical world surrounds him as with a black veil. In these moments he learns to know the origins of evil. This was called the descent into hell. Then came a strange and wonderful feeling as if the whole curtain were torn asunder. The mystic death—followed by the mystic awakening!

The sixth stage is the so-called Laying in the Grave. All that the earth bears must become as precious to man as his own body. The physical body of man could not exist separated from the earth. If it were removed even a few miles from the earth it would wither, as the hand would wither when separated from the body. What my body is for my finger, that the earth is for men. The independence man attributes to himself is an illusion. And just as man is dependent physically on the earth, so is he dependent spiritually on the Spiritual World. When man comes to feel his unity with the whole planet—then is he “laid in the earth,” then does he undergo the “burial.”

Hereon follows the seventh stage, the “Resurrection” and the “Ascension.” Man experiences here the Eternal. This stage does not admit of description. The Egyptian Priests (who were also their Wise Men) did not make use of the symbols of writing to describe such things. The Mysteries must find a way to tell what cannot be expressed in words. Through the power and might, through the magical power of the Saint John Gospel itself, these things can be experienced.

Such an initiation is the initiation of the Son. It has only been possible since Christ came to earth. The outward Christ who walked in Palestine is related to the inward Christ whom the mystic experiences, as the sun is related to the eye. If there were no eye, then could the sun not be perceived. But the sun produced the eye. Where there is no light, the organ for the light is also lost. The eye was gradually created by the Sun. The eye was created for the light by the light, says Goethe. Whosoever allows the Saint John Gospel to work upon him, develops the inner eye. But, as without the sun the eye would never have come into being, so would spiritual seership never have been there if Christ, the Spiritual Sun, had not walked the earth in person. No Christianity without the personal Christ Jesus: that is the essential and all-important fact.

All other founders of religion could say of themselves: “I am the way and the truth.” All were teachers. Christianity has brought no new teaching. But that is not important. The important thing is that Christians feel themselves bound together with the personal Christ Jesus, as in a family. That is what matters—that He was there, and has lived and has said: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.”

Oriental teachers of religion have exoteric teaching and esoteric, in the same way as Christianity has. Christianity differs from them in that exoteric Christianity is more simple and popular, it speaks to the heart, to the feelings; while esoteric Christianity is essentially deeper than all oriental esoteric. The truth is, the Christian esotericism is the most profound which has ever been brought to mankind.

Christian esotericism was brought to the earth by that very Being Himself with whom one must be united. It is a question of belief in the divinity of Christ. In the ancient Mysteries one had to behold personally during the three days of initiation. What formerly was only present in the Mysteries—that is, in the Mysteries of the Spirit—has in Christianity become an historical fact. The events in Palestine are historical fact and at the same time symbol. Christianity is of such a nature that the simplest heart can grasp it; and yet the wisest man will never outgrow it. For the deepest teachings of Wisdom lie therein.

If we understand the Saint John Gospel as a Book of Life, so that we wish to live with it, and let it come to life within us, then we shall come to know esoteric Christianity. Such esoteric Christianity has always existed, it has always been active wherever Christianity has been able to manifest in a worthy and noble way, wherever Christianity has brought the blessings of culture and civilisation to mankind.

Into all those who had experienced union and fellowship with Christ Jesus there streamed such strength as enabled them to know that life will always gain the victory over death, and that death is never a reality.

Goethe said that the great World Powers invented death in order to have “much life” in the world. Christianity is a proof that there can arise in the soul a consciousness of the fact that Life is continually and always the Victor in the world.

The Apostle Paul and Theosophy. Dr. Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, spoke on this topic at the Logenhaus on Sögestraße. The speaker's main points were as follows: The source of what we see is to be sought in the spiritual world, and to explore this is the task of theosophy. One of the greatest minds of all times is closely related to our modern understanding of theosophy: the Apostle Paul. He taught the knowledge of God (theosophy) and, through his correct recognition of the Christ Being, he has the merit of becoming the founder of the Christian worldview. The Apostle Paul's conviction is based on a supersensible experience. He looks beyond the world of the senses and recognizes its origins in the spiritual world. Only a worldview that is based on the supersensible can understand him. The theosophical worldview is such a worldview. It recognizes that there are forces in man that can develop in such a way as to enable him to penetrate into the world of the spirit. This was made possible for the Apostle Paul by grace. For modern-day theosophy, the human being is not just an external entity. In all living beings in which the “I” reveals itself, it is the same at its core, but very different in its degree of development. The highest “I” is embodied in Jesus, which was there before all people, and is therefore unique. As an all-encompassing divine being, it triumphs over death. These are also the thoughts of the Apostle Paul. Christ is the fulfillment of the law. He brings about through the impulse of his life what the outward law aims at: the harmony of men among themselves. To the Jews he was an abomination because they were bound by the law; to the Greeks he was foolishness because they believed that they could only attain knowledge of their divine essence through initiation into the mysteries. Paul, a representative of the true Christian philosophy of life, teaches that through union with Christ we are led back to the Father, to the Spirit from which we proceeded. The opponents of this philosophy of life should remember that they have learned the feelings with which they seek to combat Christianity from 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

When one learns Theosophy today, one often feels it to be something completely new. Neither a man who has graduated from the theological, nor one who has graduated from the philosophical faculty, will ever have heard of these relations of man to the rest of nature. Yet there is nothing in our present science that contradicts these teachings. Everything that is taught today only gets a hand and foot when it is built on the basis of Theosophy. The future development will be such that Theosophy will spread over all branches of knowledge. It will not take very long, because the development does not always go at the same speed; at the beginning it goes rapidly, slows down, and when it is past the middle, it goes up again rapidly. This can be proved by following things on the astral plan. From Charlemagne to the eighteenth century, there were many discoveries. Nevertheless, in these thousand years the development does not contain more than in the hundred years that have gone on since the end of this development. However, it is now going ten times as fast as in the time of Charlemagne. From this we can infer that it will not be very long before the Theosophical worldview will draw wide circles around it.

One does not find this knowledge any more with those who are determined "ex officio" to it. It was not always so. In the year 83 a man was born who had a great influence on the development of Christianity. In every line of this man we find a theosophical teaching. Now, however, he was the purest churchman. He saw in the church the purest embodiment of Christianity. From this we see that there was a theosophist as the tone-setting church teacher in those days. If you keep the terms fluid, only then you will understand the different theosophies of the world. It is not the way of expression but the meaning that must be emphasized. The doctrine of the sevenfold constitution of man is found in Augustine. He starts from the soul. It was common at that time to divide man into the well-known three members: Body, Soul and Spirit. These three parts presented themselves to the church father approximately like three liquids, which one mixes together and then can no longer distinguish from each other. Thus Augustine gets seven members out. They correspond to the sevenfold division of the theosophists. By also acquiring such views, our own insight becomes deeper and deeper.

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From the scheme we see that we need do nothing but study our own Christianity. Augustine had predecessors: Justin the Martyr; then Origen taught especially clearly. He explicitly taught the pre-existence of the soul. A philosophical foundation for Christianity was needed because Arab philosophers were gradually arriving from Spain. These had thorough knowledge in the occidental philosophy, namely of Aristotle. This also forced the Christian teachers of the Middle Ages to study Aristotle and base Christianity on him. Averroes and Maimonides were the names of the Arab philosophers. Under the compulsion of Aristotle, the initial doctrine of the soul came into Christianity.

The Celtic remnants first seized Christianity with power. The purest and most vigorous Christianity until the tenth century was taught in Ireland, England and Scotland. A beautiful monastic life developed there. The missionaries who spread Christianity in Central Europe were all from this area. Why is it in the Celtic monasteries that Christianity takes its beautiful, powerful form? In the ancient Druidic mysteries there were the same teachings. As a secret service, the teachings of the Druids were still present until the age of Queen Elizabeth. What was taught in the Druid Mysteries was the same as what is in Theosophy and Christianity. They basically got their own teaching, only in different words. Only one thing was new, which gave the great impetus to this wise mission. They had been told: We are there for the preparation of a future religion; our religion will give way to a greater one. As with the prophets of the Old Testament, Christianity was expected, foretold in the Druid Mysteries. Now they had what was expected. In Christianity came what had been predicted for millennia. The tragic train comes because the doctrine of the twilight of the gods exists; the old gods must give way to a new religion.

The teacher to whom the Irish and Scottish monks mainly go back is Beda Venerabilis. With him one finds similar things like the teachings of the carbon. In the Middle Ages one has forgotten this so that one does not understand any more what one reads with the great spirits. All this will revive Theosophy.

We have often spoken of the great and far-reaching significance of the Christ Impulse for the evolution of humanity on earth, and we have tried to characterize the whole essence of this Christ Impulse, which we usually summarize in the words “the Mystery of Golgotha,” from the most diverse angles. Recently, it has been my task to research some very specific and concrete aspects of this Mystery of Golgotha and its related matters. These investigations have presented themselves to me in such a way that I feel it is my duty to share the results of these investigations with our circle of friends, especially now, in this time of ours. I have succeeded in extracting some important information from what is called the Akasha Chronicle, and which we have often spoken about, with regard to the life of Christ Jesus.

We have already spoken at length during our last meetings about the radical changes that are taking place in the development of humanity in our time, and it is precisely in connection with these changes that it is necessary to convey to individual human souls, who have come together in the anthroposophical movement as we understand it, new data about the life of Christ Jesus. I only ask you to treat what I have to say in this regard with particular discretion and to keep it within our branches. Because even the little that has had to be published so far about the Christ Jesus life and what was not known from the gospels or tradition has already caused a certain wildness, a wild passion, and I don't even want to talk about the strange critics who are against our current , but even among those who have at least once shown goodwill towards this current, has caused a certain wildness, a wild passion, such as the story of the two Jesus children. Nothing seems so repulsive to our time, so inwardly repulsive, than drawing attention to the real results of spiritual research, to specific individual results of spiritual research. One still accepts it when the spiritual in general is spoken of, even when individual remarkable abstract theories about spiritual life are put forward. But one no longer wants to accept it when details from the spiritual life are presented in the same way as one presents details from the life of the physical plane. Much that must be said in connection with what I have to present will still be said. Now I would like to begin with the narrative itself, starting from a particular point, and I ask you to accept this narrative as a kind of fifth gospel that falls into our time as the four other gospels fell into their time. This is the only introduction that will be given. We will discuss further motivation tomorrow.

I would like to begin with the point in time that is indicated in the Gospel of Luke as the appearance of the twelve-year-old Jesus in Jerusalem among the scribes, where he attracts the attention of these scribes with the great, powerful answers he is able to give them. And so, as related in the Gospel of Luke, his relatives, who had lost track of him, find him. We know that this appearance is based on the fact that a great change in the life of Jesus had taken place, which can only be understood with the help of spiritual science. We know — and this may be briefly repeated — that approximately at the beginning of our era two Jesus-children were born, that one of them descended from the so-called Solomonic line of the House of David, and that in this Jesus-child was incarnated the spirit or the I, we may say, of Zarathustra. We know that this Jesus child grew up with a great gift, which must seem understandable when one knows the fact that this Jesus child carried the ego of Zarathustra within him. We know that the other Jesus child was born at about the same time from the Nathanic line of the House of David, and that this child had entered the physical plane with very different character traits than the Jesus child from the Solomonic line. While the boy Jesus of the Solomon line showed a special talent for everything that came from his environment and showed that it originated from human culture, up to the point where human culture had come at that time, the other Jesus boy was actually untalented in relation to everything that humanity had achieved in its development. He could not really relate to what he was supposed to learn about all that people had conquered in the course of historical development. Instead, this boy Jesus showed a wonderful depth and abundance of heart and mind, such a wealth of feeling that he cannot be compared to any other child when looking at the point in our human development where this child can be found and observed in the Akasha Chronicle.

Then the two boys grew up, and at the very moment when they were both about twelve years old, the ego of Zarathustra passed from one Jesus boy to the other, and it was the Jesus boy from the Nathanic line, with the ego of Zarathustra within him, who gave the great, powerful answers before the scribes in Jerusalem. So it was that the peculiar nature — one cannot say it any other way — of the Jesus child of Nathan and the I of Zarathustra had united. We know then — and this has been presented by me on earlier occasions — that the physical mother of the Jesus child of Nathan soon died, as did the father of the other child, and that now from the mother of the other Jesus child — the Solomonian Jesus child also soon wasted away because he was actually without an ego, withered away —, that now from the mother of the Solomonian Jesus child and the father of the Nathanian Jesus child a family became. The step-siblings, who were descended from the mother and father of the Solomonic line, also came over and now lived in Nazareth, and within this family, that is, with his stepmother or foster mother, the Jesus child with the Zarathustra ego now grew up within him, without his knowing, of course, at this age, that he had the ego of Zarathustra within him. He had within him the capacities that the ego of Zarathustra must have; but he did not know how to say: I have the ego of Zarathustra within me.

What now emerged, what had already been announced in the great answers he had given to the scribes, but what emerged more and more, that was - so I have to describe the life of this Jesus boy, the life from about the twelfth to the eighteenth year of life - that something like an inner inspiration asserted itself in his inner being , a direct knowledge that arose in him, a knowledge of a very peculiar kind, a knowledge that was so natural to him that he perceived something in his own soul, as the ancient prophets in the primeval times of Judaism had received their divine-spiritual revelations from divine-spiritual heights, from spiritual worlds. They had been accustomed to describe in their memory the message that once came to the ancient prophets from the spiritual world as the great Bath-Kol, as the voice from the spiritual world, the great Bath-Kol. As if the great Bath-Kol had risen again in him, but now in him alone, it seemed to the twelve-, thirteen-, fourteen-, eighteen-year-old Jesus, a rare, wonderful maturity of inner inspiration, a revival of those inner experiences that only the ancient prophets had.

What is particularly striking when one focuses on this point in human development in an Akashic chronicling manner is that within the whole family and within the whole environment in Nazareth, this boy was alone and lonely in relative youth with his inner revelation, which went beyond everything that others could know at that time. Even his stepmother or foster mother at the time understood him very poorly, and the others even less so. And it is less important when judging this boy Jesus to form all kinds of theories, but rather to have a sense of what it means to be a mature boy between the ages of twelve and eighteen, to feel something completely alien within oneself feelings of revelation that were impossible for anyone else at the time, and to stand alone with these revelations, unable to speak to anyone, and what was even more, to have to feel that no one would understand if you spoke to them. It is difficult for a man to endure such things; to experience such things between the ages of twelve and eighteen is something monstrous. And to this monstrosity was added another.

He had an open mind, this boy Jesus, for what a person in his time was capable of receiving. Even then, with the eyes of his soul open, he saw what people, by virtue of their nature, were able to absorb and process spiritually and soulfully, and what they had received over the centuries from the ancient prophets revealed to the Jews. Deeply pained, with the most profound sorrow, he felt: Yes, it was so in primeval times, so the great Bath-Kol spoke to the prophets; that was an original teaching, of which scant remnants have remained among the Pharisees and other scribes. If the great Bath Kol were to speak to any human being now, there would be no one to understand the voice from the spiritual world. Humanity has changed from the time of the old prophets. Even if those great, those glorious revelations of primeval times were to resound today, the ears to understand them would be missing. This came to the soul of this Jesus child again and again, and with this suffering he was alone.

It is impossible to convey the depth of feeling that turned to what suffering, so characterized as I have just done, befell this Jesus child. And it may be said without fear of contradiction: No matter how much we may have said in theory about the Mystery of Golgotha, the magnitude of the cosmic or historical aspects is not at all overshadowed when we consider the individual concrete facts more and more as they present themselves in their factuality. For it is only by observing these facts that one can fully appreciate the course of human development, how an ancient wisdom was also present in the Jewish people and how impossible it was to understand this ancient wisdom at the time when it only, one might say, tentatively in a single soul between the ages of twelve and eighteen, but only caused this soul agony because no one could have understood how this Bath-Kol had expressed herself, how this revelation was only there for this soul to suffer endlessly. The boy was completely alone with these experiences, which, so to speak, represented the suffering of the historical development of mankind in such a concentration.

Now something developed in the boy that, I would like to say, can be observed in its rudiments here and there in life, which one must think of only infinitely magnified in relation to the life of Jesus. Pain and suffering experienced from similar sources to those described here are transformed in the soul, so that the person who experiences such pain and suffering within himself naturally transforms into goodwill, into love, but not just into feelings of goodwill and feelings of love, but into the power, into an enormous power of love, into the possibility of living this love spiritually and emotionally. And so, as Jesus grew up, something very peculiar developed in him.

Despite the hostility of his brothers and sisters and his immediate surroundings because they could not understand him and regarded him as someone who was not quite himself, it could not be denied that, as it showed up at the time for the physical eye, it now shows up for the Akashic Records that wherever this young lad went, if he spoke to anyone, even if they could not understand him, they at least responded to what he said, there was something like an actual overflow of a certain something from Jesus' soul into the other soul. It was like the passing over of a fluid of goodwill, of love, that was what radiated. It was the transformed suffering, the transformed pain. It came to those who came into contact with Jesus like a soothing breath of love, so that one felt one had something special in front of one, by being in some way in his presence. It was as if he were a kind of carpenter or joiner, and Jesus worked diligently in the Father's house. But in the hours when he came to himself, what I have just characterized took place. These were the inner experiences of Jesus of Nazareth, let us say between the twelfth and sixteenth or eighteenth years of his life.

Then, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four, he began a kind of wandering. He wandered around a lot, working here and there in the trade he practised at home, coming into contact with Jewish and pagan areas. Even then, something very strange was already showing in a peculiar way in his dealings with the people he met, as a result of his experiences in his earlier years. And it is important to bear this in mind, because it is only by taking this into account that we can penetrate more deeply into what actually happened back then in the development of humanity.

He came, I would say, working from place to place and there to the families. After work, as we would say today, he sat with the families, and there one sensed everywhere that train of goodwill, of love, of which I spoke. You felt it everywhere, but you felt it, so to speak, through action; because everywhere he went, in the years when he traveled around between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four, you had the feeling: There really is a special being sitting here. They didn't always express it, but they had the feeling: There is a special being among us. And that expressed itself in the fact that when he had moved away from the place, it wasn't just that they talked about what had happened between him and the others for weeks, but often it turned out like this: When the people sat together in the evenings while he was away, they had the feeling that he was entering the room. It was a shared vision. They had the feeling: He is among us again. And that happened in many, many places: that he had gone away and yet was still there, appearing spiritually to people, living spiritually among people, so that they knew: we are sitting with him.

As I said, in terms of the subjective it was a vision; in terms of the objective it was the tremendous effect of the love that he had expressed in the way described, and which expressed itself in such a way that the place of his appearance was in a certain sense no longer bound to the outer physical space, to the outer physical space conditions of the human physical body. It is tremendously helpful for understanding the Jesus figure to see again and again how indelibly he is imprinted in the minds of those to whom he once came, how he, so to speak, remained with them spiritually and returned to them again. Those who once knew him did not lose him from their hearts.

Now, during this wandering, he also came to pagan areas, I said, and in a pagan area he now had a very special experience. This experience makes a particularly deep impression when considering the Akasha Chronicle of this point in human development. He came to a pagan area. At this point, I would like to make it very clear: if you ask me where this was, where he came, I still have to tell you today: I don't know. Perhaps later research will reveal where it was, but I have not yet been able to find the geographical location. But the fact is absolutely clear. There may be reasons why one cannot find the geographical location, but why the fact itself can be absolutely clear. In fact, precisely by telling you these things, I do not want to withhold from you at any moment the admission of what has not yet been investigated in this matter, so that you can see that I am really concerned in this matter with communicating only what I am fully able to vouch for.

So he came to a pagan place. There was a dilapidated place of worship. The priests of this place had long since left the place; but the people all around were in deep misery, afflicted by diseases. Precisely because an evil disease was raging there, the pagan priests had left the place of worship for this and other reasons. The people felt not only sick, miserable, burdened and laden, but also abandoned by the priests who had performed the pagan sacrifices, and suffered terrible torments. Now he came here to this area. It was around the time of his twenty-fourth year. Even then, he was already to a great extent characterized by the fact that he made a very special, a tremendous impression by his mere appearance, even if he did not even speak, but only when he was seen approaching. There is really something very special about this appearance of Jesus for the people of that time among whom he appeared. One felt something quite incredible when he approached. One must bear in mind that one is dealing with people from a completely different age and a different region. When he approached, one could see people feel: There is something very special here, something radiates from this being that does not radiate from any other person. Almost everyone felt this, some sympathetically, others without sympathy. It is not surprising that it became known and spread like wildfire: a special being is coming! And those around the altar believed that another old pagan priest had come or had sent someone to perform the sacrifice again. And the crowd that gathered became more and more numerous; for like wildfire it spread that a very special being had arrived. Jesus, when he saw the crowd, had infinite compassion for them, but he did not have the will, although they stormily demanded it, to perform the sacrifice again, not the will to perform this pagan sacrifice. But when he saw this crowd, his soul was filled with the same pain over the decayed paganism as it had been filled with the pain over the decayed Judaism in the years from the twelfth to the sixteenth, eighteenth year of his life. And when he looked at the crowd, he saw demonic elemental entities everywhere among the crowd, and finally also at the sacrificial altar where he was standing. He fell as if dead; but this falling occurred only because he lapsed into a state of being removed from the world due to the dreadful sight he had witnessed.

While he lay there, as if dead, the crowd was seized with fear. The people began to flee. But he, while lying there in a different state, had a vision of the spiritual world that illustrated to him what ancient paganism was like when the original wisdom of paganism was still present in the sacrificial rites of the pagans in the ancient mysteries in their original sacred form. It revealed to him what paganism was in primeval times, how it had revealed itself to him earlier in a different way, what Judaism was like. But just as this happened in a spiritual-soul, invisible way, just as what arose in inspiration, just as it had come to the old prophets, wanted to speak to him, so he had to experience the greatness of paganism in a different way, had to see what can only be described by saying that he saw, as he lay there, the pagan places of sacrifice, which were so arranged in their cultic furnishings that they were a result of the original mystery revelations, and were actually like the external representation of the mystery ritual. At these sacrificial sites, when the sacrifices were performed, the prayers of the people were accompanied, during the ancient times when this still existed in its original form, by the infusion of the powers of those spiritual entities from the ranks of the higher hierarchies to which the heathens could rise. As if he saw a vision before his mind's eye: Yes, when sacrifices were once made at such an altar, in the times when paganism was in its old glory, then the forces of the good pagan gods flowed into the sacrificial acts. But now - now, not through an inspiration, but through an immediate imagination - he had to experience the decline of paganism in great vividness. He now had to experience this, the decline of paganism too! And instead of the good powers flowing into the sacrificial acts as they had done in the past, demonic elemental entities now came to life, all kinds of elemental emissaries of Lucifer and Ahriman. He saw them now, and that was how the descent of paganism appeared to his mind's eye.

That was the second kind of great pain that he could feel: once the heathens had cultic rites that connected humanity with the good beings of certain hierarchies. This has become so decadent, so corrupt, that there are places like this where all good forces have been transformed into demonic forces, that it has come to such a pass that the people around them have been abandoned by the old pagan gods. So in a different way, the decline of paganism came before his soul than with Judaism, in a more inward, much more vivid way.

Indeed, one must know a little about the difference in feeling and sensing between when this feeling and sensing is the outflow of such direct imaginative experience or of theoretical knowledge. By fixing one's gaze on this point in the Akasha Chronicle, one indeed gets the impression of an infinitely meaningful but infinitely painful experience of the developmental history of humanity, which in turn is compressed into this imaginative moment.

He knew now: Divine spiritual powers once lived among the heathens; but if they lived now, there would be no people and no possibility for people to truly restore that ancient relationship. He now experienced this misery of humanity, concentrated and compressed into a brief experience. And as he rose to perceive what had once been revealed in the good, in the best old days of paganism, he heard words – so one can say – which felt to him like the secret of all human life on earth and its connection with the divine spiritual beings. I could not but express in words of our German language what had been spoken to the soul of the fallen, as if dead, Jesus, who at that very moment began to come to himself again. And for certain reasons I had to communicate these words first to our friends who were gathered at the time, when we laid the foundation stone for our building at Dornach. What was heard at that time, as primeval wisdom, is expressed in German words as follows:

Amen
The evils prevail
Witnesses of dissolving unity
Of selfhood guilt incurred by others
Experienced in daily bread
In which heaven's will does not prevail
Since man has separated himself from your kingdom and forgotten your names, you fathers in the heavens.

You see, my dear friends, it is something similar to an inverted Lord's Prayer, but that is how it should be.

Amen
The evils
Witnesses of selfhood that is released
From the guilt of selfhood owed to others
Experienced in the daily bread
In which the Will of Heaven does not rule
Because man has separated himself from your kingdom
And forgot your names
You fathers in the heavens.

After this had appeared to him as the secret of man's existence on earth and his connection with the divine-spiritual being, he came back to himself and still saw the fleeing demons and the fleeing people. He now had a great moment of life behind him. He now also knew how it stood with the development of mankind in relation to paganism. He could say to himself: Even in the wide fields of paganism there is a descending development. He had not gained this knowledge through external observation, but through observation of the soul, this knowledge which showed him: paganism, like Judaism, needs something quite new, a quite new impulse!

We must firmly grasp that he had these experiences. He had the Zarathustra-ego in him, but he did not know that he had it in him, not even then. So he had experiences as experiences, because there was no teacher who could have explained it to him theoretically; he had these experiences as experiences.

Soon after he had had this experience in relation to paganism, he began his journey home. It was around the age of twenty-four when he came home. It was around the time when his father died, and now he was living with the family and with the stepmother or foster mother in Nazareth again. The strange thing was that everyone around him seemed to understand him less and less. Only his stepmother or foster mother had gradually developed a certain understanding of the tremendous — albeit incomplete — emotional and loving process taking place in this soul. And so it happened that sometimes, even though the mother was still far from understanding him intimately, they would exchange a few words, even if they were still superficial in relation to what Jesus felt, so that the mother grew more and more to what lived in the soul of Jesus.

During this time, however, he had another special experience, which brought him the third great sorrow. Between the ages of twenty-four and thirty, he became more and more involved with a community that had formed some time before, the Essene community. This Essene community consisted of people who recognized that there was a certain crisis in human history, that Judaism and paganism had arrived at a point in their descending development where people had to seek a new way to find union with the divine spiritual world again. And in relation to the old mystery methods, it was basically something new, which lay in the way of life that the Essenes sought in order to come up again to the union with the divine-spiritual world. These Essenes had particularly strict rules of life, in order to seek union with the Divine-Spiritual again, after a life of renunciation and devotion, after a life that went far beyond mere mental and intellectual perfection.

These Essenes were actually quite numerous in those days. They had their headquarters at the Dead Sea. But they had individual settlements in various regions of the Near East, and their numbers increased to such an extent that here and there someone was seized by the Essene idea, by the Essene ideal, through circumstances that always arise in such areas, felt impelled to join the Essenes. Such a person then had to give up everything that was his to the order, and the order had strict rules for its members. A person who was in the order could not keep any individual property. Now one person or another had this or that small property here or there. When he became an Essene, this property, which might be far away, fell to the Essenes, so that the Essenes had such properties everywhere. They usually sent younger brothers there, not the one from whom the property originated. From the common property, everyone could support anyone who was deemed worthy, a measure that best shows that at different times, different things benefit humanity, because such a measure would be extremely harsh in our time. But there was such a thing for the Essenes. This consisted in the fact that everyone was authorized to support from the common fund people whom he considered worthy, but never those who were related to him. That was strictly excluded, not close or distant relatives. There were different degrees in the order itself. The highest degree was a very secret one. It was very difficult to be admitted to it.

It is really the case that at that time, with regard to Jesus' life, Jesus was already so that to an enormous degree what I have described as a fluid emanating from him, which had an effect on people like embodied love itself, one might say. This also had an effect on the Essenes, and so it came about that he, without actually being a formal Essene, was drawn to the Essene community. Between the ages of twenty-four and thirty, he became so familiar with the Essenes that we can say that he had learned many of the things he experienced and discussed with them, which were their deepest secrets.

What once was the glory of Judaism, he learned between the ages of twelve and eighteen; what the secret of the Gentiles was, he learned between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four. So now, by dealing directly with the Essenes and letting him partake of their secrets, he came to know the secret of the Essenes as it developed up to a certain union with the divine spiritual world. He could say to himself: Yes, there is something like a path to find the way back to the connection with the divine spiritual. And one really sees, after he had been tormented twice, in relation to Judaism and paganism, how it sometimes dawned on him while he was among the Essenes, something like a cheerful confidence that one could indeed find a way up again. But experience was soon to disabuse him of this cheerful confidence.

Then he learned something that was not learned theoretically, again not learned as a doctrine, but in direct life. Once, after he had just joined the Essenes, he went through the Essenes' gate and had a powerful vision that deeply affected his soul. He saw in the immediate vicinity how two figures fled from the Essenes' gate, and he already knew in some way that they were Lucifer and Ahriman; they fled from the Essenes' gate, as it were. He then had this vision more often when he walked through Essene gates. Essenes were already quite numerous at that time, and one had to take them into consideration. Now the Essenes were not allowed to go through the usual gates that were painted. This was connected with the way they had to shape their soul. The Essenes were not allowed to go through any gate that was painted in the manner of the time. He was only allowed to go through unpainted gates. There was one such gate in Jerusalem, and in other cities as well. The Essene was not allowed to go through a painted gate. This is proof that the Essenes were quite numerous at that time. Jesus came to some of these gates, and very often the same apparition repeated itself to him. “There are no pictures there,” he said to himself; ‘but instead of pictures, I see Lucifer and Ahriman standing at the gate.’ And so it formed in his soul – which one must take only from the point of view of spiritual-soul experience in order to fully appreciate it; by saying it that way, describing it theoretically, it is of course easy to accept, but one must consider how the experience of the soul takes shape when one experiences these things in direct spiritual reality. It was through this experience that he developed, let me repeat the word I have already used: the conviction of experience, which can only be expressed in such a way that he could say to himself: It seems as if the Essene way is the one, as has been shown to me in various ways, by which one can, through the perfection of the individual soul, find the way back into the divine spiritual worlds; but this is achieved at the expense of the Essene setting up their way of life in such a way that they keep away from everything that would in any way allow Lucifer and Ahriman to approach them. They set everything up so that Lucifer and Ahriman could not reach them. So Lucifer and Ahriman had to stand outside the gate. And now he also knew, by following the whole thing spiritually, where Lucifer and Ahriman always went. They went to the other people outside who could not make the Essene way! That struck terribly at his mind, giving a stronger sorrow than the other experiences. It weighed so heavily on him that he had to say to himself: Yes, the Essenes could lead individuals upwards, but only if these individuals devoted themselves to a life that could not be granted to all mankind, that was only possible if individuals separated themselves and fled from Lucifer and Ahriman, who then went to the great multitude.

So it lay on his soul, how a few could experience again what the old prophets had experienced from the great BathKol, what appeared to the heathens at the ancient sacrifice. If what the descendants of the heathens and Jews can no longer experience, if the individual would attain on the Essene way, then the necessary consequence would be that the great remaining mass would be all the more afflicted by Lucifer and Ahriman and their demons. For the Essenes achieve their perfection by sending Lucifer and Ahriman, who flee, to other people. They attain their perfection at the expense of others, for their path is such that only a small group can follow it. This was what Jesus now learned. This was the third great pain, which became even more pronounced for him because, as if emerging from his Essene experiences and entering into the community of the Essenes themselves, he had something like a visionary conversation with the Buddha, whose community, a closer community, much in common with the Essene movement, only centuries older. The Buddha revealed to him from the spiritual world: Such a community can only exist if only a small group of people participate in it, and not all people. It seems almost primitive when one says that the Buddha revealed to Jesus that the Buddha monks could only go around with the offering bowl when there were only a few such monks and the others were, so to speak, paying for it with another life. It sounds primitive when you put it that way. But it is different when the responsible spiritual power, as here the Buddha, reveals this in a situation in which Jesus of Nazareth now finds himself.

And so, in the life between the twelfth and thirtieth year of life, Jesus of Nazareth had experienced the development of humanity in threefold suffering, right down to the last detail. What now lived in his soul, what had been crowded together in this soul, he was able to develop in a conversation with this mother after the age of twenty-nine, after his stepmother or foster mother had gradually come to understand his nature and had become close to him. And important, infinitely important, was a conversation between Jesus of Nazareth and his stepmother or foster mother around the time of his thirtieth year, a conversation that was conducted in which everything that Jesus of Nazareth experienced during those years was truly poured out, as it were, into a few hours, and which became significant because of it. There are few spiritual experiences that are as significant, at least for a certain level of spiritual experience, as the one that one has when one focuses one's gaze on what Jesus of Nazareth had to say to his stepmother or foster mother.

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.)

On a beautiful September day this year, I went on a trip to Zurich. Since the day was free, I decided to go to Maria-Einsiedeln, which was an important place of pilgrimage in the early Middle Ages and enjoys a wondrous location. There was also a so-called pilgrimage on this day, and since fine, sunny weather was in prospect, one could expect an extraordinarily lively atmosphere in Maria-Einsiedeln, as is well known.

I also wanted to make a pilgrimage, for which there was an opportunity here, so I took a carriage to the Devil's Bridge, which goes up and down hills, and after a while I found myself there in front of a house that had recently been built in place of an old, historically significant house. a plaque identifying it as the birthplace of the famous physician and naturalist Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus Paracelsus von Hohenheim, who was born here in 1493 and died in 1541, at the age of forty-eight. If you linger there a little, you really feel the magic of nature, as you can only encounter it in the Alps. All the plants and animals there inspire you with a sense of intimacy, a language of the most intimate familiarity with the untouched essence of nature. And in the midst of such strong impressions of the interweaving with an outwardly charming nature, the image of the young Paracelsus arose in me, who had spent the first nine years of his life in this impressive environment. In him, we have a receptive personality who, even in his childhood years, was open to learning about nature. This boy had an individuality that seemed to prepare him to eavesdrop on many of nature's secrets in such a unique place, even if it was only at first by guesswork. We can imagine how the boy longingly awaited his absent father, a respected and busy doctor, with his questions, how he often accompanied his father on short trips, and how many a word about patients, their care, and the surrounding nature was exchanged in questions and meaningful explanations. When the boy turned nine, the family moved to Villach in Carinthia, where he was able to continue his interaction with nature and his father to an even greater extent.

Now follow me in your mind to a house in the eastern part of Salzburg, where a plaque announces that Theophrastus Bombastus Paracelsus von Hohenheim died here on September 23, 1541. The legend associated with his death may come to mind, according to which the doctors, who were extremely hostile towards him, hired someone to throw him off the nearby hill. Between the years mentioned, a highly peculiar life is enclosed, and this remarkable personality at the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries appears in the development of mankind as the dawn of a certain epoch, which can still show the spiritual sky of all that is beautiful and grandiose. Basically, everything that can be heard from the soul of Paracelsus is a testimony to the fact that he maintained a continuous and intimate connection with nature and understood the world around him. He maintained these strong relationships during his extensive travels throughout the world, in the areas of his homeland, throughout Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, Turkey, everywhere quickly understanding and at home with what presented itself to him in the most diverse forms as the secret of existence. Thus, he gathered a rich treasure trove of knowledge and wisdom on his travels, and how he explored the world in his own way becomes even clearer to us when we imagine how he lived out the impressions he had brought with him from there and from his youth at the University of Basel, especially when we consider how university studies were conducted at the time, and how it was with scientific research and medical knowledge in particular. The old writings of Galen and Avicenna were used as a basis everywhere, and the learned men of the universities of that time delivered a kind of commentary on these ancient writers in Latin.

Paracelsus said to them: You speak about books, you are far removed from all that nature speaks to us in powerful revelations when we only open the gates of our soul to her, and he left this official teaching center of that time. Some called him a tramp then and still call him one today, but he was only a tramp on the outside, and only because he believed that if you wanted to learn the secrets of the world, you had to go to the spiritual beings that lived in that very world. He wanted to use his clairvoyant powers of the soul to learn how nature lives in its creation, to eavesdrop on the secrets of the world in all the countries he traveled through. Not from books, but from the great book of nature, he wanted to turn the individual pages of the same, as he said, while traveling from place to place. Paracelsus believed that behind the sensual lies the spiritual and that what is outwardly perceptible is only a manifestation of the spiritual. The great, all-embracing spiritual has different sensual forms in plants, animals and humans in different countries and climates, although the spiritual is unified. He sought the spiritual in its diversity, like a hidden aroma or a concealed light. It was also clear to him that the external form of the current life, including that of the types of humanity and the individual peoples, in their healthy and diseased states, also belong to these diversities. He imagined disease to be something mysterious, but with a different character in Germany, Hungary, Italy, and so on. He wanted to get to know what came to his mind when he was directly confronted with nature, in order to establish a salutary science of medicine. When we see Paracelsus placed in the multiform world, we recognize how he found special powers in the great book of nature and in his soul, and what he said, according to his studies and experiences, takes on an almost personal character. He developed a very unique state of mind as a result of his special relationship with nature. Without this leading to arrogance, he said that he felt forces speaking in and through him, which he felt as if not his own arbitrariness and logic, but as if nature were speaking directly in and through him. Only someone who is capable of grasping such a relationship, in which Paracelsus felt completely natural and at ease, will be able to understand how he could not relate to his colleagues and their books differently than actually occurred, since it did not appear to him that they were striving for genuine knowledge, when he said: “He who wants to learn and practice true pharmacology should not go to the old authors, not to Galen and Avicenna, not to Bologna, Paris and so on, not to those, not there, but follow me; for mine is the monarchy!” He was so grounded in himself, and his motto was: “No one should be a servant to another; he can remain alone for himself.” Thus, we see Paracelsus as an honest, defiant personality among his contemporaries, as a person in whom a clairvoyant power had emerged, who knew how nature lived in its creation, how it expressed itself in the healthy and diseased state of man.

But just as uncomfortable as he felt as a student, so he also felt as a professor and city physician in Basel. Although he was famous for his travels and his skills, and although he was able to help where all others failed, he was more or less considered by his colleagues to be a tramp who had roamed with dubious people, and although he should have behaved differently as a teacher in office and dignity, he had remained the same even in his university life. So he didn't get along with his colleagues either; even when we follow him on his travels, how he performs famous cures on the poor, on princes and respected people, and is cheated of his fee by them, as well as at the highest levels. He became famous, among other things, for healing a person whom we can regard as a forerunner of the age of printing, namely Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, who, as a credible scholar, expressed a judgment full of respect and reverence for Paracelsus. In Basel, a strange and momentous event took place: Paracelsus cured a canon of Lichtenfels of a severe and painful illness, and had stipulated a fee of one hundred talers for the cure. The sufferer took the remedies prescribed by Paracelsus three times, and then recovered. However, he did not want to pay the sum for such a simple service, as he saw it. Paracelsus then became quite angry and sent loose notes around the whole city. The city council, however, told him that if, after such insults to the highly esteemed canon, he had not left the city within half an hour, he would be put in prison. Paracelsus therefore fled from the city under the cover of darkness.

As he so often clashed with his environment, so it happened with his colleagues, since he cured according to other aspects. Besides, they took it very badly that he shared the connections that were self-evident to him, which he had overheard as secrets of nature and now applied to the healing and care of the sick, quite unashamedly, that he and connected, did not believe that he should express them better in the Latin language with its sharp, abstract contours, but instead used the living German language with its great flexibility and fine nuances. His colleagues did not understand how his knowledge, which was inaccessible to them, was interwoven with innumerable imponderables, how he was able to present this in German, contrary to the custom of learned schools, to his listeners, and thereby dare to reduce the dignity of the university according to their outdated view. During his wanderings, they tried to blacken his name everywhere. The scholars challenged him to Latin disputations, which he accepted, but in which, in the event of technical differences, he shouted at them in German, thus providing a vivid picture of the relationship between him and his contemporaries. It is understandable that almost everyone treated such a man in the most hostile way, and also that his life could only be short in such a grueling struggle. With his comprehensive and penetrating knowledge, he was unable to adapt to the externalized habits of his colleagues in his field and to wear the old-fashioned robe in which they appeared at the university at that time, so that they said of him: “Our colleague Paracelsus was seen walking around in the robe of a cart driver.” Those who felt they were no match for him in terms of knowledge and ability, and whom he openly despised because of their scientific masquerade, can be understood to have felt a deep hatred for him, and this is the source of the legend that formed at the end of his life: that he was deliberately annoyed to death or even thrown off the mountain near Salzburg. Thus we see his portrait, traversed by the deep traces of mental labor and the furrows of suffering that his opponents had caused.

In order to get closer to the spiritual life of this man, we have to try to answer the question of how Paracelsus actually imagined the surrounding nature, which he needed for his medical science, and human nature in his individual way; how peculiar his spiritual conception was. He initially established the following points of view: One must be able to comprehend the whole great world, the macrocosm, in its manifestation and understand how man, as microcosm, is situated in it as a particular detail, how air relates to the lungs, light to the eye, how the same works outside and inside in man. Everything that has effect outside we also find in man with its laws. Therefore, we have to look for what can make a person healthy or sick in the macrocosm, especially as a member of the Earth planet as a large organism in which the human being represents a link. He then said: Although the human being can be integrated into the chain of natural phenomena, he is still a self-contained being. The forces of the whole of nature are concentrated in man, but cannot easily lead him to cut himself off from the external forces and beings of nature. This is because, said Paracelsus, man has within him a living architect, an “archaeus”, who literally tears him away from the whole of nature and gives him his own unique configuration.

Paracelsus wanted to explore what a person absorbs from external influences in order to then process them within themselves, and he took such elementary insights to the highest expression. This is the most important thing to him, but not much is said about it. When man eats bread and fruit, for example, he said, the “archaeus” transforms it in man into flesh, into the various substances of the organs, as an inner alchemist, and depending on how this happens, the external substances become healthy, useful bodily substances or poison. He then examined this transformation, the unconscious art of this being, and viewed a certain type of disease from this perspective.

He established the third law: what has been integrated in this way is organized from many groups of individual organs and is independent. The human being is a whole small world, a microcosm in the image of the macrocosm.

He therefore came to the conclusion that out there in the cosmic conditions of the large planetary bodies there is something that corresponds to the microcosm of the human being. For example, the way the sun and moon relate to each other is how the heart relates to the brain internally; so you have to study both in their uniqueness and mutual interrelations and transfer them to the human being in their effectiveness, and likewise transform Saturn and Jupiter in their movements, sizes and light conditions to the liver and spleen of the human being, as their microcosmic image.

Thus, he constructed an internal heaven from the organs of the human being as an image of the external starry sky. He thought of the dynamically differentiated energies in the human being in this way, considering nothing to be separate, but everything in lively interaction. It is interesting to see how he defended what appeared to him to be the effect of an inner heavenly system, not as a rough interaction of the food we take in, but in rough language: “Oh, they don't understand anything, those who believe that the food we take in interior according to their chemical constitution, so to speak, only in continuation of their external chemical forces; because that would be about the same as regarding the plant as an effect of the dung, compared to the living configuration of the organs active in the human being. Thus, we see how the interacting organs appear to him like the dynamics of a complicated clockwork, and Paracelsus says: Man can therefore be “offended”, depending on the inner alchemist prepares the spiritual or unspiritual, with normal or anomalous interaction of the organs, even without external causes!

Fourthly, Paracelsus says as a basic principle: the soul falls ill through its own passions and emotional upheavals, with the organism also affected as an after-effect.

Finally, as a fifth point of view: the completeness of the science of medicine is given to him by the fact that the person in his illness must be seen as someone who suffers from his fate - karma - from something that towers above him spiritually, that intervenes in the spiritual microcosm from the spiritual macrocosm, so that the former is completely under the influence of the latter.

Thus, Paracelsus combined a wide-ranging knowledge with the greatest trust in the spiritual and mental powers of the human being, but also with the broadest trust in the spiritual forces of the great world that underlies the organization of the human being. He therefore said, through the mind we find God behind the natural event, through faith we find Christ and through imagination we find the Holy Spirit. He had a deep soul, his heart was imbued with the most intimate piety. We see the most essential part of his clairvoyant vision in his piety, from which everything that accompanied his deeds as a doctor emerged. It is therefore understandable that he described love and hope as his two most important remedies, and the nature of his medical treatment emerged for him without fail from this, when he did everything in full love and devotion that was possible according to his five points of view, and in the knowledge of these connections, he hoped that his remedy would have the healing effect that he had intuitively seen. He lived completely with the disease and the conditions of his patients in general. He looked clairvoyantly according to his five aspects, what had worked from the outside into the person, what the “inner alchemist” had done on it. What then penetrated from the great spirit of the whole of nature to the sick person, was not reflected back to him in abstract terms, but in such a way that it flowed down from the sick person to him again and concentrated in him to that which he had to prescribe as a remedy. Therefore, we can understand how Paracelsus was deeply convinced that his medical work was a continuous production as an artist. He guided the substances beyond nature to become effective remedies by forming and combining them for this purpose. Higher nature in nature was his art, his intention and his alchemy; he created art products in relation to nature. In Paracelsus, something reminds us of Goethe's saying:

When the healthy nature of man functions as a whole, when he feels himself to be a part of a great, beautiful, dignified and valuable whole in the world, when harmonious comfort grants him pure, free delight – then the universe, if it could feel itself, would exult as if it had reached its goal and would admire the summit of its own becoming and being.

There is no more precise way to describe this clairvoyant man than through these words!

And if we turn our gaze from Paracelsus to Goethe over the centuries, then, despite all the differences, Goethe's spirit has much in common with that of Paracelsus. We see that, as a young boy, Goethe placed himself in nature when, at the age of seven, he took a music stand, decorated it with all kinds of minerals from his father's collection, with plants and shells, crowned the whole thing with a small incense cone, and then waited for the sun to rise. He collected the rays in a burning glass, ignited the incense stick with it, and thus offered a sacrifice to the great, almighty God in front of his altar. If we consider the motives for which the young Goethe acted in this way, then we feel how he, like Paracelsus, felt most intimately connected with nature. Paracelsus said of himself, as a rough-and-ready country boy, that he was sent out of the house in all weathers, and that he did not grow up in soft beds on figs and wheat bread, but on sour milk and coarse oat bread.

In Goethe, we find a rarely disturbed harmony, always soon regained, also in his view of nature, which is evident in many ways in his work as a scientific researcher on his trip to Italy, where he, like Paracelsus, traveled the country observing keenly and wrote home about coltsfoot, for example, which, among other things, particularly caught his eye as it developed in different ways after changing the climate and sun, location, soil type and so on. He sees the emergence of diversity from unity, as he particularly wanted to demonstrate with the primal plant, from which he developed the diversity of plant natural phenomena. He also wrote that he would like to travel further to India, not to discover something new, but to follow nature in its ever-changing diversity.

In this way, something in Goethe was awakened that can be found in many ways in the figure of Paracelsus. And when Goethe embodied his main character in Faust, many traits are interwoven into this that evoke the thought that, when conceiving of “Faust”, Goethe was under the influence of the character of Paracelsus, despite the great difference between “Faust” and the historical Paracelsus, who died before the end of the forties of his life, but until then carried an inner harmonious seclusion as a treasure in his soul, which he had gained from his intimate intercourse with nature. It was only a short lifetime of this in itself rarely happy spirit, which his research results and his professional activity connected with the eternal reasons of nature.

Faust begins where Paracelsus ends, but with great doubt in all his extensive knowledge, Faust strives in the years of his life that Paracelsus no longer reached.

Goethe had developed Faust to the point where he had reached the stage of soul development that Paracelsus had when he penetrated into the essence of nature, when Faust breaks out into the words:

Exalted Spirit, thou gavest me, gavest me everything
I asked for. Thou didst not turn
Thy countenance to me in fire in vain.
Gavest me the glorious kingdom of nature
and the power to feel and enjoy it. Thou dost
allow only cold, wondering visitors,
granting me to look into her deep breast,
as into the bosom of a friend.
You drove the line of the living
before me, and taught me my brothers
in the silent bush, in air and water.

Thus he was related to the life and workings of nature, but nevertheless Faust's research was different from that of Paracelsus; for Goethe shows us that Faust's insights are not always gained in direct contact with nature, as they are with Paracelsus, but remain confined to the realm of the soul forces.

Therefore, in Mephistopheles, without such a confrontation with the phenomena of nature, Goethe brought a confrontation of the soul, so that the soul was not seen in nature, but only in the soul.

And yet, we can see a strong relationship between Faust and Paracelsus when the latter put the Bible aside for a long time and turned away from it, just as Paracelsus did from the learned works of Galen and Avicenna. Both trusted their own powers to find their own way. Thus we feel that Goethe often sees Paracelsus in the background and, to a certain extent, sees him through Faust. For example, in the scene where Faust goes out into the spring landscape with Wagner and recounts:

My father was a dark man of honor
Who, in his own way, thought long and hard
about nature and its sacred circles
with whimsical effort;
who, in the company of adepts,
locked himself in the black kitchen
and, according to endless recipes,
brewed up the adverse.
Then a red lion, a bold suitor,
was married in the lukewarm bath of the lily,
and then both tormented with open flames
from one bridal chamber into another.

One could almost see Paracelsus talking to his father. Or when we read how Faust struggles to “translate the New Testament into his beloved German”, into the language that flows from his soul, just as Paracelsus does not want to express the wisdom of nature that he has deciphered in the foreign Latin, but only in German. But nowhere in Faust does the struggle with the surrounding nature in the direction of its knowledge appear as it does in Paracelsus, but in the first part with moral, in the second part with spiritual, spiritual powers - Homunculus.

What Faust wanted to achieve was something natural for Paracelsus, who thought and acted completely selflessly. Only at the end, after a selfish life, when he had become blind in old age, did Faust achieve selflessness, when “a bright light shines within”, when he became a mystic, when he gained insight into the innermost being, which Paracelsus had discovered throughout his life as an elementary feeling spirit from external nature. Paracelsus was the dawn at the turn of the fifteenth to the sixteenth century, clearly visible to all. In Faust, we can only seek it within, as a soul-acting power.

Why was Goethe able to describe Faust as he did? Because something special occurred in the development of humanity between the life of Paracelsus and the conception of Faust, which powerfully shifted the earlier conditions and steered them into new channels. What Copernicus and Kepler discovered, Paracelsus no longer experienced. He was only the dawn of a science that had then entered the morning dawn from the sensual into the supersensual. Paracelsus penetrated through the phenomenal side of nature to the spirit, but through Copernicus and the men working in his spirit, humanity has been led into the age of intellectuality, of thinking, which does not want to penetrate the veil to explain the world of the senses in the sense of earlier times, but seeks satisfaction in the knowledge of the soul. It was therefore inevitable that a spiritual approach would be chosen as the basis for the work of Goethe's Faust, just as Copernicus, Kepler, Giordano Bruno and Galileo worked in the same way. As a mystic, Paracelsus appropriated the same knowledge that Faust acquired through direct observation of nature. Goethe's Faust shows how modern man depends on the inner life of the soul. In the same way, spiritual science searches in the depths of the soul for that which can lead from the transitory to the infinite eternal.

After Paracelsus, a new era dawned, which said that if we turn to the non-sensuous, we will gain a correct understanding of our world system. And so Goethe presented his Faust as a representative of this view who had risen to a higher level. Spiritual science is advancing along this path, which leads from the realm of the soul into the secrets of nature. Just as Giordano Bruno broke through the blue firmament of the eighth sphere, so spiritual science is now breaking through the boundaries of birth and death by revealing the soul as an infinite being that reaches beyond space and time. Goethe thus seems like someone who shows us the beginning of the right path by presenting us with an image in Faust, to which the memory of Paracelsus leads us, in order to be able to understand him even more.

Thus, individual human beings are placed in the context of the further development of the world, and so today, too, man must again break new ground so that he can find the harmonization of his soul forces in his insights, beyond Paracelsus and Faust. Based on such relationships, one feels more and more deeply the inner affinity between Paracelsus and Goethe, especially in the latter's words:

When the healthy nature of man functions as a whole, when he feels himself to be a part of a great, beautiful, dignified and valuable whole in the world, when harmonious comfort grants him pure, free delight – then the universe, if it could feel itself, would exult as if it had reached its goal and would admire the summit of its own becoming and being.

In man as in a microcosm, Goethe, like Paracelsus, seeks and sees the entire workings of the great world, the macrocosm.

On the way back from the birthplace of Paracelsus in Maria-Einsiedeln, one is thoroughly shaken by the journey over the valley and hills, and in this way, one becomes quite aware of the gnarled character of Paracelsus, in addition to which, the memory of Goethe also resurfaced on approaching the pilgrimage church. Symbolically, the spirit of the great seemed to manifest itself to me in the outwardly small-looking church of Maria-Einsiedeln, as soon as one really lets the interior take effect on oneself and appreciates the tasteful interior in its kind accordingly. Goethe once stood in this atmospheric room, in this small yet great church, which, like a microcosm in the macrocosm, also presented the human being as an image of the great world to the contemplative observer. I sensed this in his words and could imagine how Goethe, in this place where Paracelsus often stood, felt the basic sensation of the correspondence between macrocosm and microcosm in man becoming clearly expressed within himself. The path from Paracelsus to Goethe shows us this: the two boundary points of this path, the evening star and the rising sun of the new age, point to a profound similarity between the souls of the two men as a living protest against an external, unspiritual, non-spiritual understanding of things, which Goethe says in Faust, and which, significantly, Mephisto says:

Who wants to recognize and describe something alive,
First seeks to drive out the spirit,
Then he has the parts in his hand,
Unfortunately, only the spiritual bond is missing.
Encheiresin naturae is what chemistry calls it,
Mocks itself and does not know how.

This also belongs to the character of Paracelsus as a living protest against overlooking the whole when considering the parts. Instead of the final words, Goethe had written in the earlier version of “Faust”:

He makes himself an ass and does not know how.

Paracelsus and Goethe both condemned such a view of nature; both were inspired by the opposite tendency, which, in line with Mephisto's words, could be translated as:

Who wants to get to the bottom of something living
should seek to fathom the spirit in the depths!
And when he has the parts in his hand,
he sees the spirit's light
as the only salvation in the spiritual bond
that holds together what otherwise does not recognize itself
and the secrets of the universe.

Among the events that occurred in Palestine at the beginning of our era there is one in particular to which repeated reference has been made: the Baptism of Jesus of Nazareth by John, and the fact was emphasized that regarding its essentials all four Gospels are in agreement. What we shall do today is to consider this Baptism from one particular aspect.

From the manner of its presentation in the Gospels we gather that the Baptism points to an event of the utmost import—an event also explicable by means of the akashic record—which had to be characterized somewhat as follows: In about the thirtieth year of Jesus of Nazareth's life there entered into His three sheaths that divine Being Whom we call the Christ. We must distinguish, then—and this is revealed through a study of the Akashic record—between two stages in the life of Christianity's founder. In the first place we have the life of the great Initiate Whom we call Jesus of Nazareth. In this Jesus of Nazareth there dwelt an ego-being which we showed to have passed through many previous incarnations, to have lived repeatedly on earth, to have ascended ever higher in these succeeding lives, and to have risen by degrees to the capacity for the great sacrifice. This sacrifice meant that toward Jesus of Nazareth's thirtieth year His ego was able to renounce His physical, etheric, and astral bodies, which hitherto He had purified, cleansed and ennobled, thus providing a threefold human sheath of incomparable purity and perfection. When the ego of Jesus of Nazareth abandoned these sheaths at the Baptism, these received the Being Who had never previously dwelt on earth, Whom we cannot think of as having passed through previous incarnations. The Christ Being could formerly be found only in the world existing outside our earth. Not until this moment of the Baptism by John did this Individuality unite with a human body, in order to accomplish, in the three years following, what we must endeavor to set forth in ever greater detail.

What I have just told you was gathered by means of clairvoyant observation. The Evangelists clothe this event in their descriptions of the Baptism; and what they meant was while a variety of experiences came to those whom John baptized, in the case of Jesus of Nazareth there occurred the event of the Christ descending into His three sheaths. I told you in the first of these lectures that this Christ is the same Being of Whom the Old Testament says:

And the Spirit of God moved (or brooded) upon the face of the waters.

This same spirit—that is, the divine Spirit of our solar system—entered the threefold sheath of Jesus of Nazareth.

I shall now set forth what actually occurred at the Baptism by John; but inasmuch as this was the supreme event in Earth evolution, I must beg you to realize from the outset that it is necessarily difficult to comprehend. The minor events of Earth evolution are naturally easier to understand than the great ones: who could doubt, therefore, that the mightiest one of all must present the greatest difficulties? I shall presently make various statements that may shock those who are insufficiently prepared; but even they should remind themselves that the purpose of the human soul's sojourn on earth is to keep constantly perfecting itself—in the matter of gaining insight as well as in others—and that what at first comes as a shock must in time appear—wholly comprehensible. Were this not the case one would needs despair of the possibility for development in the human soul. As it is, however, we can remind ourselves daily that regardless of how much or how little we have learned, it is our task constantly to perfect our soul, that it may ever better comprehend this matter.

We have before us, then, a threefold human sheath, a physical, etheric, and astral body, and of these the Christ takes possession, so to say. That is indicated by the words resounding out of the universe:

This is my Son, imbued with my love, in Whom I manifest myself.

That is the right translation of this utterance. One can readily imagine that mighty changes must have taken place in the three-fold sheath of Jesus of Nazareth when the God entered it; but you will understand, too, that in the old initiations great changes were involved, affecting the whole human being. You will recall that I described the last act of the old initiation for you. After the neophyte, initiated in the divine mysteries, had undergone long preparation by means of study and exercises, he was reduced to a deathlike state for three and a half days, during which his etheric body was separated from his physical body; and this enabled the fruits garnered by the astral body to express themselves in the etheric body. This means that the candidate rose from the rank of a “purified one,” as the term is, to an “illuminated one” who envisions the spiritual world.

Even in those old times—or rather, especially then, when such initiations were still possible—one who had reached this stage had a certain power over his entire corporeality; and after returning into his physical body he controlled it superbly in respect of certain finer elements. Here you might ask, In facing such an initiate, one who achieved so great a mastery over his various sheaths—even the physical body—could one notice this—did he show it?—Well, it was observed by anyone who had acquired the faculty of that sort of vision. Others as a rule saw him as an ordinary, simple man and noticed nothing remarkable about him. Why? Simply because the physical body, as seen by physical eyes, is merely the outer expression of what underlies it, and the changes mentioned refer to the spiritual element that underlies the physical body.

Now, all the old initiates achieved a certain degree of mastery over their physical body as a result of the procedure to which they were subjected; but there was one capacity that no old initiation could ever bring under the dominion of the human spirit. Here we touch the fringe, as it were, of a profound secret, or mystery. In the structure of man there is one element to which the power of a pre-Christian initiation could not penetrate: the subtle physicochemical processes in the skeleton. Strange as it may sound to you, that is the case. Previous to the Baptism of Christ Jesus there never had been a human individuality in earth evolution, either among initiates or elsewhere, with power over the chemico-physical processes in the skeleton. Through the entry of the Christ into the body of Jesus of Nazareth the egohood of Christ acquired dominion even over the skeleton. And the result was that, as a unique event, there lived upon earth a body capable of employing its forces in such way as to incorporate the form of the skeleton—that is, its spiritual form—in Earth evolution. Nothing of all that man passes through in his earth development would endure were he not able to incorporate in Earth evolution, as a law, the noble form of his skeleton, were he unable gradually to master this law of the skeleton.

There is a connection here with an old popular superstition—indeed, old traditions are frequently associated with the occult. In certain circles it is customary to employ the skeleton as a symbol when death is to be represented. This stands for the idea that at the beginning of Earth evolution all the laws governing the systems of the human organization other than the skeleton were so far advanced that at the end of the Earth's evolution they would be present again, though in a higher form; but that evolution would carry over nothing into the future unless the form of the skeleton were taken over. The form of the skeleton conquers death in the physical sense, hence He Who was to vanquish death on the earth must have mastery over the skeleton—in the same manner as I indicated this mastery over certain spiritual attributes in connection with lesser faculties. Man has control of his circulatory system only to a slight degree: in feeling shame he drives his blood outward from within which means that the soul acts upon the circulatory system; in turning pale when frightened he drives his blood back inward into the center; in sorrow, tears come to his eyes. All these phenomena represent a certain dominion of the soul over what is bodily; but far greater mastery over the bodily functions is enjoyed by one who has been initiated beyond a certain stage: among other powers, he has the ability to control arbitrarily the movements of the various parts of his brain in a definite way.

The human being, then, that was the sheath of Jesus of Nazareth came under the dominion of the Christ; and the will of the Christ, His sovereign will, had the power to penetrate the skeleton, so that it could be influenced, so to speak, for the first time. The significance of this fact can be set forth as follows: Man acquired his present form, given by his skeleton, on the Earth—not during a previous embodiment of our planet; but he would lose it again had it not been for the coming of that spiritual power we call the Christ. He would carry over into the future nothing in the way of harvest and fruits of his sojourn on Earth had not Christ established His dominion over the skeleton. It was therefore a stupendous force that penetrated to the very marrow of the threefold sheath of Jesus of Nazareth at the moment of the Baptism by John. We must visualize this moment vividly, for it is one of the events we are considering.

In the case of an ordinary birth the attributes deriving from a previous incarnation unite with what is given through heredity. The human individuality that had existed in former lives merges with what is provided for him as his corporeal-etheric sheath; in ether words, something from the spiritual world unites with the principle that is physical, of the senses. Those of you who have frequently attended my lectures are aware that as regards outer appearances everything presents itself as in a mirror, reversed, as soon as we enter the spiritual world. So when a person becomes clairvoyant by rational methods, when his eyes have been opened to the spiritual world, he must first gradually learn to find his way about, for everything appears reversed. When he sees a number, say 345, he must not read it as he would in the physical world, but backwards: 543. In like manner you must learn to observe, in a certain sense, everything else as well in reverse—not only numbers. Now, the event of the Christ uniting with the outer sheath of Jesus of Nazareth appears, to one whose spiritual eyes are open, in reversed order. While in a physical embodiment something spiritual descends from higher worlds and unites with the physical, that which was sacrificed—in this case in order that the Christ Spirit might enter—appeared above the head of Jesus of Nazareth in the form of a white dove. Something spiritual appears as it detaches itself from the physical. That is factually a clairvoyant observation; and it would be far from right to consider it a mere allegory or symbol. It is a real, clairvoyant, spiritual fact, actually present on the astral plane for clairvoyant capacity. Just as a physical birth implies the attraction of spirit, so this birth was a sacrifice, a renunciation; and thereby the opportunity was provided for the Spirit, Who at the beginning of our Earth evolution moved upon the face of the waters, to unite with the threefold sheath of Jesus of Nazareth and to permeate it with power and fervor, as described.

You will now understand that when this took place an area was involved far greater than the spot on which the Baptism occurred. It would be very shortsighted to imagine that an event associated with any being whatever were circumscribed by the boundaries visible to the eye. That is one of the powerful delusions to which men succumb when they put their entire faith in the outer senses alone. Where is a man's boundary, as the outer senses see it? A superficial verdict would say, in his skin. That is where he stops in all directions. Someone might even add, If I were to cut off the nose that is part of you, you would no longer be a complete human being; which goes to show that everything of that sort is part of your being.—But how short-sighted that is! When we limit ourselves to physical perception we do not look for any integral part of a man even ten to twelve inches or so outside his skin; but consider that with every breath you draw you inhale air from the general air of your environment. Well, if they cut off your nose you are no longer a complete human being; but the same is true if your air is cut off. It is quite arbitrary to imagine that a man is bounded by his skin. Everything surrounding him is part of him as well, even in the physical sense; so that when something happens to a man at a given spot, it is not only the space occupied by his body that participates in the occurrence. If you were to try the experiment of poisoning the air in a circle having the radius of a mile, surrounding the spot where man stood—poisoning it virulently enough for the fumes to reach him—you would discover that the entire space within the mile radius takes part in his life processes.

The whole earth takes part in every life process; and if that is the case even in a physical life process, you will not find it difficult to understand that in an event such as the Baptism the whole spiritual world participated, and that much, very much, occurred in order that this might take place. If within the radius of a mile you poison the air surrounding a man to the extent of influencing his life processes, and if then another man approaches him, the latter will suffer an effect as well. This may differ, according to his proximity to the poisoned area: if he is at a greater distance, for example, the effect will be less; but some effect will nevertheless result. It will therefore no longer seem strange to you if today we raise the question concerning the possibility of there having been other influences resulting from the Baptism. And here we touch another profound mystery of which we are constrained to speak with awe and reverence, for the preparation needed to understand such things will come to mankind only by slow degrees.

At the same moment in which the Spirit of Christ descended into the body of Jesus of Nazareth and the transformation occurred as described, an influence was exerted upon the Mother of Jesus of Nazareth as well. It consisted in her regaining her virginity at this moment of the Baptism; that is, her inner organism reverted to the state existing before puberty. At the birth of the Christ, the Mother of Jesus of Nazareth became a virgin.

Those are the two momentous facts, the great and mighty influences indicated, though cryptically, by the writer of the John Gospel. If we are able to read this Gospel aright, all this can be found stated there in one way or another; but in order to recognize its meaning we must link up with various matters upon which we touched yesterday from other aspects.

We have said that in olden times people lived under the influence of endogamy, meaning that marriage was entered into within the same tribe by blood relatives. Only as time passed did it become customary to marry outside the tribe into other blood. The farther back we go in time, the more we find people living under the influence of this blood relationship; and the flowing of the tribal blood through men's veins brought about the strong, magical forces of which we spoke. One who lived at that time and could look far back in his line of ancestry, finding there only tribally related blood, had magical force working in his own blood, making possible the influence of soul upon soul as described yesterday. And people knew that very well, even the simplest of them. But it would be utterly wrong to conclude from this that nowadays consanguineous marriages would produce similar conditions, that magical forces would come to light. You would be falling into the same error as would the lily of the valley if it were suddenly to announce: Henceforth I shall no longer bloom in May: I shall bloom in October! It cannot bloom in October because the necessary conditions are lacking; and the same is true of the magical forces: they cannot develop in an era in which the requisite conditions no longer exist. In our time they must evolve in a different manner; what was described applies only to the older epochs.

The crude materialistic scientist can naturally not understand the idea that the laws governing evolution have changed: he believes that what he witnesses today in his physics laboratory must always have proceeded in the same way. But that is nonsense, because laws do change; and those who have derived their faith from modern natural science would have marveled at the events in Palestine, narrated in the John Gospel, as something strange indeed. But those who lived at the time of Christ Jesus, when living traditions told of an age in which such things were wholly within the range of possibility, were not particularly amazed at them. That is why I could say yesterday that no one was greatly astonished at what occurred at the Marriage of Cana in the nature of a sign.

And why should they have been astonished? Outwardly it was nothing but a repetition of something they knew to have been observed time and again. Turn to the Second Book of Kings, IV, 42-44:

And there came a man from Baalshalisha, and brought the man of God bread of the first fruits, twenty loaves of barley, and full ears of corn in the husk thereof. And he said, Give unto the people, that they may eat. And his servitor said, Should I set this before an hundred men? He said again, Give the people, that may eat: for thus saith the Lord, They shall eat, and shall leave thereof. So he set it before them, and they did eat, and left thereof, according to the word of the Lord.

There you have in the Old Testament the same situation we find in the feeding of the Five Thousand, narrated in a manner suited to that time. Why should such a sign excite wonder among people whose documents told them that it had happened before? It is essential that we understand this.

Now, what took place in a man who had been initiated in the old sense? He gained access to the spiritual world: his eyes were opened to the spiritually active forces—that is, he could penetrate the connection between the blood and the spiritually active forces. Others had a faint glimmering of this, but the initiate's vision reached back to the first ancestor from whom the blood had flowed down through the generations; and he could apprehend that an entire folk ego expressed itself in this blood, just as the individual ego is expressed in the individual's blood. That is the way an initiate saw back to the source of the blood stream that coursed through the generations, and he felt identified in his soul with the whole Folk Spirit whose physiognomy came to expression in the common blood of the people. Such a one was to a certain degree initiated, and up to a point he was master of definite magical powers in the old sense.

There is another thing we must keep in view. The male and female principles co-operate in the propagation of mankind in a manner that can be briefly characterized as follows. Were the female principle to dominate completely, man would develop in such a way as to keep constantly producing homogeneous characters: the child would always resemble his parents, grandparents, and so on. Forces that bring about resemblance are inherent in the female principle, while all that reduces it, that creates differences, lies with the male principle. When, within a folk community, you find a number of faces that resemble each other, you have what derives from the female element; but certain differences are to be seen in these faces enabling you to distinguish the separate individuals, and this results from the male influence. If the influence of the female element alone prevailed you would not be able to tell the different individuals apart; and if only the influence of the male element were in evidence you could never recognize a group of people as belonging to the same stock. So the manner in which the male and female principles co-operate can be stated as follows: the influence of the male principle individualizes, specializes, separates, while that of the female principle tends to generalize

From this we can see that whatever pertains to a people as a whole derives from the female element: the force in woman carries over from generation to generation the factor which otherwise expresses itself in the continuous blood stream. A further characterization of the origin of the magical forces residing in the blood bonds could be given thus: they are linked with the female principle that courses through the entire people and lives in all its members.

Well, if a man had risen through initiation to the point of being able to wield the forces, so to speak, with which the common blood was inoculated through the female folk element, what was his essential characteristic? The old Persian initiation adopted certain names to distinguish the various degrees rising to spiritual heights, and one of these names must be of special interest to us. The first degree in the Persian initiation was termed the Raven; the second, the Initiate; the third, the Warrior; the fourth, the Lion; the fifth degree always bore the name of the people in question: a Persian, for example, who had risen to the fifth degree of initiation was termed a Persian.

First the initiate became a Raven, which meant that he could carry on a study of the outer world; and being a servant of those who dwell in the spiritual world he brought to that world tidings of the physical world. Hence the symbol of the Raven as emissary between the physical and the spiritual world—from the Ravens of Elijah to those of Barbarossa.—On reaching the second degree the initiate came within the spiritual world; and one initiated in the third degree, having advanced past the second, is entrusted with the mission of interceding for occult truths: he becomes a Warrior. An initiate of the second degree was not permitted to contend for the truths of the spiritual world.—In the fourth degree the spiritual truths became established, to a certain extent, in the initiate. And the fifth degree is the one of which I said that here the initiate learned to control all that flowed in the blood through the generations, learned to deal with it by means of the forces descending with the blood through the female element of propagation. What name, then, would be applied to a man who had experienced his initiation within the Israelitic People? Israelite, just as in an analogous case in Persia he would have been called a Persian.

Now observe the following. Among the first to be brought to Christ Jesus, according to the Gospel of St. John, was Nathanael. The others, who were already followers of Christ Jesus, say to Nathanael:

We have found the Master, Him Who dwells in Jesus of Nazareth.

To which Nathanael replies:

Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?

But when Nathaniel is brought to Christ, Christ says to him:

Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile.

An “Israelite” indeed, in whom truth dwells! Christ says this because He knows to what degree Nathanael is initiated. Whereupon Nathanael realizes that he is dealing with someone who knows quite as much as he does—in fact, with One Who towers above him, Who knows more than he does. And then, in order to stress the reference to initiation, Christ adds:

I saw thee before thou comest to me: before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.

The term “fig tree” is here used in exactly the same sense as in connection with Buddha: the fig tree is the “Bodhi Tree.” It is the symbol of initiation. What Christ says to him is, I recognize thee as one initiated in the fifth degree. The author of the John Gospel indicates that Christ surveys from above, as it were, an initiate of the fifth degree. Step by step this writer leads us on, in this case by showing us that in the body of Jesus of Nazareth there dwells one who stands above the fifth degree of initiation.

And more. We have just learned that a fifth-degree initiate commands the occult-magical forces residing in the blood flowing down through the generations: he has become one, as it were, with the Folk Soul; and earlier we learned that this Folk Soul expresses itself in the forces inherent in woman. Therefore one who is initiated in the fifth degree will be dealing—in accord with the old conditions—with the female forces. This, of course, must be viewed spiritually. But Christ's relation to these forces is an entirely new one: He is dealing with the woman who regained her virginity through the Baptism, who recaptures the new, sprouting forces of the virgin state. That was the wholly new factor which the writer of the John Gospel intended to indicate by saying that a certain current flowed from the Son to the Mother. Everyone with occult knowledge at that time knew quite well that a son, provided he was initiated in the fifth grade, was able to employ magically the folk forces expressed in the folk element of his mother, but Christ demonstrated in a loftier spiritual manner the forces of the woman who had become virgin again.

Thus we see what led up to the Marriage in Cana. We see that what occurred there had to be brought about by an initiate excelling an initiate of the fifth degree, and we are also shown that this fact bore a connection with the folk forces inherent in the female personality. In a marvelous fashion the author of the John Gospel prepares us for what came to pass there. As has been said, we shall approach the miracle question itself later; but in the meantime you can readily imagine that freshly drawn water is different from water that has stood for a time, just as a flower freshly picked is different from one that has been wilting for three days. Differentiations of that sort naturally do not occur to materialistic observation. Water until recently united with the forces of the earth is very different from stale water. In conjunction with the forces residing in the freshly drawn water, one who is initiated as described can work through the forces which are linked with a spiritual relationship such as that between Christ and the Mother who has become virgin. Christ carries farther what the earth is capable of achieving. The earth can transform the water in the grapevine into wine. The Christ, Who has approached the earth and become the Spirit of the Earth, is the spiritual principle that is otherwise active in the entire earth body; so if He is the Christ He must be able to accomplish as much as the earth. And the earth, within the vine, transforms water into wine.

The first sign, therefore, performed by Christ Jesus as set forth in the John Gospel is one that links up, so to speak, with what could be accomplished in olden times by an initiate who controlled the forces extending through the blood ties of the generations, as we have just learned out of the Books of Kings.

But now we find a continuing increase in the strength of those forces which Christ develops in the body of Jesus of Nazareth—not those that the Christ had within Himself. Therefore, do not ask, Can it be, then, that the Christ has to develop? Certainly not. But what did have to be developed through the Christ was the body of Jesus of Nazareth, however purified and ennobled: it had to be guided upward step by step by the Christ; for into this body were to be poured the forces intended to manifest themselves shortly.

The next sign is the healing of the nobleman's son, and the following one, the healing of him who had lain sick for thirty-eight years by the Pool of Bethesda. What intensification have we here of the forces through which Christ worked on this earth? It consists in the fact that now Christ could influence not only those who surrounded Him, those actually present in the flesh. At the Marriage of Cana He caused the water to become wine as the people drank it: He worked upon the etheric bodies of those present; for by the infusion of His force into the etheric bodies of the people surrounding Him the water became wine in their mouths—that is, the water tasted like wine. Now, however, the effect was intended not alone for the body, but for the very depths of the soul; for only in that way could Christ influence the nobleman's son through the mediation of his father, and only thus could He penetrate the sinful soul of him who had lain sick for thirty-eight years. To send His forces into the etheric body alone would not have sufficed: the astral body had to be acted upon, for it is the astral body that sins. By exerting an influence upon the etheric body, water can be turned into wine; but in order to affect another personality it is necessary to penetrate to something deeper. And this demanded that Christ continue to work upon the threefold sheath of Jesus of Nazareth.—Note well that Christ does not thereby change, thereby become another: He merely works upon the threefold sheath of Jesus of Nazareth; and this He does henceforth in such a way that the etheric body can become more independent of the physical body than it was previously.

So the time came when the etheric body in the threefold sheath of Jesus of Nazareth became freer, less closely bound to the physical body. This resulted in greater mastery over the latter: more powerful works could be accomplished, so to speak, in this physical body than hitherto—that is, powerful forces could be employed in it. The potentiality for this was given with the Baptism in the Jordan, and now it was to be further developed with special intensity. All this, however, was to come about through spirit. The power of the astral body was to become so great in the threefold sheath of Jesus of Nazareth that the etheric body could acquire the control over the physical body that was indicated. Now, by what means alone can the astral body attain such power? By acquiring the right feelings, by devotion to the right feelings towards all that takes place around us; above all, by achieving the right attitude towards human egotism. Did Christ accomplish this with the body of Jesus of Nazareth? Did His work result in the right attitude toward all the egotism He encountered, in exposing the fundamentally egotistical character of the souls present? Yes: the author of the John Gospel tells us how Christ appears as the purger of the Temple when he meets with those who do homage to egotism and defile the Temple by making it into a trading center. Thus He was able to say that His astral body had achieved sufficient strength to rebuild His physical body in three days, should it perish. This, too, is indicated by the writer of the John Gospel:

Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? But he spake of the temple of his body.

This indicates that the sheath which had been offered Him in sacrifice now has the power to control and master the physical body completely. Now this body, become independent, can move about at will, no longer subject to the laws of the physical world: regardless of the usual laws of the world of space, it can bring about and direct events in the spiritual world. Again we ask, does this occur? Yes: it is indicated in the chapter following the one in which the purging of the Temple is related.

There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him ...

Why does it say here, “by night”? The explanation that the Jew was simply afraid to go to Jesus by the light of day, so he crept through the window in the night, is as trivial a one as could well be imagined. Anybody can make up explanations of that sort. By night means nothing else than that this meeting between Jesus and Nicodemus occurred in the astral world: in the spiritual world, not in the world that surrounds us in our ordinary day consciousness. This means that Christ could converse with Nicodemus outside the physical body—by night, when the physical body is not present, when the astral body is outside the physical and etheric bodies.

Thus the threefold sheath of Jesus of Nazareth was prepared by the Christ, Who dwelt in it, for the acts that were to follow: for what was to be infused into the souls of men. This implied a degree of sovereignty in the soul dwelling in Jesus of Nazareth that would enable it to act upon other bodies. But acting upon another soul is an entirely different matter from the type of influence we discussed yesterday. It comes to light in the next intensification, in the Feeding of the Five Thousand and in the Walking on the Water. To be seen in the flesh without being physically present called for something more; and so powerful had the force become, even at that stage, in the body of Jesus of Nazareth that the Christ was seen not only by His disciples but by others as well. Only, here again we must read the John Gospel carefully; for someone might take the standpoint of readily believing this sign in the case of the disciples, but not in the others.

The day following, when the people which stood on the other side of the sea saw that there was none other boat there, save that one whereinto his disciples were entered, and that Jesus went not with his disciples into the boat, but that his disciples were gone away alone; (Howbeit there came other boats from Tiberias nigh unto the place where they did eat the bread, after that the Lord had given thanks:) When the people therefore saw that Jesus was not there, neither his disciples, they also took shipping, and came to Capernaum, seeking for Jesus.

Let me emphasize that it says here, the people who sought Jesus. The narrative continues:

And when they had found him on the other side of the sea, they said unto him, Rabbi, when camest thou hither?

That implies the same occurrence as in the case of the disciples. It does not say that every ordinary eye saw Him, but that He was seen by those who sought Him and who found Him, by virtue of an increase in their soul force. To say that someone saw another person does not imply that the person seen stood there in the flesh as a spatial figure visible to the physical eye. What in outer life is generally called "taking the Gospel literally" is really anything but that.

If you note that in all of this we have once more to do with what is essentially an intensification, you will understand that again something had to precede it, something to show that Christ had been working on the threefold sheath of Jesus of Nazareth in a manner to render its force ever mightier. His work was that of a healer: He was able to transmit His force to the other's soul. This He could only do by working henceforth in the manner He Himself describes in His conversation with the Samaritan woman by the well:

I am the living water.

At the Marriage in Cana He had revealed Himself as an initiate of the fifth grade, having dominion over the elements: now He makes it clear that He works in the elements and dwells in them. Later He manifests Himself as one with the forces active on the whole earth and throughout the world. This occurs in the chapter dealing with

Jesus, who hath power over life and death:

over life and death by virtue of His power over the forces active in the physical body. That is why this chapter precedes the sign the performance of which called for a still greater force.

Then we see the force still increasing. Yesterday we pointed out that in the sign described as the healing of the man born blind Christ intervenes not only in matters pertaining to life between birth and death, but in that which passes from life to life as the individuality of the human soul. The man was born blind because the divine individuality in him manifested itself in its works; and his sight is to be restored by means of the force Christ infuses into him, a force that will wipe out that which happened—not through the man's personality between birth and death, nor as a result of heredity, but which was incurred by his individuality.

I have repeatedly explained that Goethe's beautiful aphorism, “The eye is formed by means of light, for light,”¹ which proceeded from a deep understanding of the Rosicrucian initiation, has a profoundly occult basis. I pointed out that Schopenhauer was quite right in saying that there can be no light without the eye; but how does the eye originate? Goethe says truly that had it not been for light, no organ sensitive to light, no eye, would ever have come into existence. The eye was created by the light. A single illustration proves this: when animals equipped with eyes migrate into dark caverns they soon lose their sight through lack of light. Light is what formed the eye. If Christ is to imbue a human individuality with a force able to create in him the capacity for making the eye into an organ responsive to light, such as it had not been previously, there must reside in the Christ the spiritual force that lives in light. Let us see where this is indicated in the John Gospel. The healing of the blind man is preceded by the chapter in which we read:

Then spake Jesus unto them, saying, I am the light of the world.

The healing of the blind man is narrated only after having been anticipated by the revelation,

“I am the light of the world.”

Now turn to the last chapter before the Raising of Lazarus and try to visualize some of the disclosures made there. You need only consider the passage reading:

Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down ... If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not.

Everything said here about the “good shepherd” is intended to indicate Christ's feeling that He is one with the Father, that henceforth He will no longer think of Himself as "I" other than as He is imbued with the Father force. As earlier He said, “I am the light of the world,” so now:

I renounce my ego force by receiving the Father in me, so that the Father may work in me, that the primordial principle may permeate me and then flow forth into another being. I lay down my life that I may take it again.

That is what precedes the Raising of Lazarus.

And now, keeping all these considerations in mind, try to grasp the John Gospel in respect to its composition. Notice that up to the Raising of Lazarus, not only is a marvellous intensification indicated in the development of the forces residing in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, but before each increase we are told exactly what it is that acts upon his body. Oh, you will find everything in the John Gospel so closely knit that, if only you understand it, you will realize that not a sentence could be omitted. And the explanation of such marvellous composition is that it was written as we have said, by one who was initiated by Christ Jesus Himself.

Our point of departure today was the question, What occurred at the Baptism in the Jordan? and we found that the potential capacity for vanquishing death came into the world with the descent of the Christ into the threefold sheath of Jesus of Nazareth. We saw the change that came over the Mother of Jesus of Nazareth with the coming of the Christ: through the influence exercised upon her at the Baptism she became virgin again. The assertion, then, that was to be vouchsafed mankind through the John Gospel is indeed true: When at the Baptism the Christ was born in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, the Mother of Jesus of Nazareth became a virgin.
That is the point of departure of the Gospel according to St. John; and if you grasp it in conjunction with the mighty cosmic influence exercised in the event that occurred on the bank of the Jordan, then you will also understand that an accurate description of such an event—the first description of it—could only have been achieved by one whom Christ Himself had initiated, by the risen Lazarus “whom the Lord loved,” thenceforth always mentioned as the disciple whom the Lord loved. It was the risen Lazarus who bequeathed us the Gospel; and he alone was able so firmly to weld its every passage because he had received the mightiest impulse from the greatest initiator, from Christ. He alone could point to something that later Paul, through his initiation, comprehended in a certain sense: that at that moment the germ of victory over death had entered Earth evolution.

Hence the momentous words spoken of Him Who hung on the Cross:

Not a bone of him shall be broken.

Why? Because the form over which Christ must retain His dominion was not to be desecrated. Had they broken His bones, a base human force would have interfered with the power Christ must exercise even over the bones of Jesus of Nazareth. None must touch that form, for it was written that this should remain wholly subject to Christ's dominion.

This will serve as a starting point for a consideration of the death of Christ, which we will undertake tomorrow.

• 1. Das Auge ist am Lichte für das Licht gebildet

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.

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.