The Rudolf Steiner Archive

We will soon depict the scene of the second part of Goethe's “Faust”, which precedes the final scene, which, as you know, has already been depicted. The scene begins with the holy anchorites:

Woods, they sway in,
rocks, they weigh on them,

Goethe calls it “Faust's Ascension” and the scene that now follows is usually called the “Entombment”. But we will begin where, in the broader sense, this entombment of Faust is depicted.

When one comes to the various parts of Goethe's “Faust”, one must repeatedly and repeatedly fall into a certain astonishment at the infinite depth that lies in the second part of Goethe's “Faust”, in particular, deep in that one is dealing with an objectivity in the representation of the spiritual world that can be justified by spiritual science. And it is remarkable that Goethe presented the spiritual world with such objectivity at a time when spiritual science as such did not yet exist. I do not need to dwell at length on the question that was once put to me when I gave a lecture many years ago on Goethe's “Fairytale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily”, and a theosophical authority of the old school asked me whether I thought that Goethe knew everything that was said from the spiritual science to justify the deeper secret of the poem of the green snake and the beautiful lily. I could only reply whether the person in question believed that the plant also knows exactly what the botanist makes about it in order to be able to grow in the right way according to the botanical laws. When one hears such a question, one is usually aware of how clever the questioner feels. But if one thinks such a question through to its conclusion, then one realizes how endlessly foolish people often are, who think of themselves as being so clever. So we need not concern ourselves further with the question of whether Goethe, for instance, also studied spiritual science somewhere in the way we can study it today, even if objections can very easily be made from a point of view that considers this question. We want to go straight to the matter itself.

We are presented with three types of figures in addition to those familiar to us from the rest of the Faust legend. We are presented with three types of figures that have to do with the period of time that elapses between the death of Faust and the ascent of his soul into the spiritual regions. The first type of figures presented to us are the lemurs; the second type of figures presented to us are the thick devils with short, straight horns, and the third are the scrawny devils with long, crooked horns; both types of devils are “of the old devil's grist and grain”.

Now we can ask: What spiritual instinct, what deeper wisdom, would lead us to present these three figures in the Entombment and before the Ascension of Faust? This “Entombment” is introduced in such a way that Faust has grown old in his evolution, and, as Goethe himself stated, has become a hundred years old. So, at the beginning of this scene, we are dealing with the old, hundred-year-old Faust, who is still chained to Mephistopheles, but in such a way that Faust can now believe that Mephistopheles has become his servant. Faust has made the decision to wrest a piece of land from the sea, to cultivate this piece of land, and thereby create the basis for an area that will be beneficial to humanity, where this humanity, part of humanity, can develop in peace and freedom. This land is, so to speak, because it was wrested from the sea by Faust's labor, Faust's creation. It is to be made complete by draining a swamp that is there through a ditch, so that the air will also be purified, so that the health of the people who are to develop in peace and freedom will not be endangered by the polluting vapors of the swamp. Faust now believes that Mephisto has become his overseer in this beneficial work and commands the host that is to perform the last work. Faust has already gone blind, as was shown in the previous scene. So he does not see what Mephistopheles is doing on the external physical plane, and it is understandable that he later confuses the words “digging” and “grave”. While Faust is of the opinion that a ditch should be dug to drain the swamp water into the sea in order to purify the air, Mephistopheles has the grave of Faust dug by his lemurs. As a centenarian, Faust thus still experiences the deception, becomes entangled in the web of lies of Mephistopheles, who has the grave dug and, through the similarity of names, deceives Faust into imagining that a ditch is being dug.

There are already many secrets in it. I do not want to get involved in these things today, perhaps it can be discussed another time. But I would prefer us to make ourselves clear about the nature of these three beings. Right at the beginning of the scene, which takes place in the forecourt of the palace that Faust has built for himself, Mephistopheles appears, as already mentioned, as the overseer of the workers, whom Faust believes he has assembled, while Mephistopheles calls his lemurs. Mephistopheles characterizes the lemurs not in a particular scenic remark, but in the scene itself:

Come, come! Enter, enter!
You shivering lemurs,
Made of ligaments, tendons and bones
Half-natures patched together!

So they are described to us as creatures that are held together only by the ligaments that hold the limbs of the human body together, anatomical tendons and bones. So what is not even present in the human organism in the form of muscles holds these figures together, they are patched together out of it. They are not full-natured, not whole-natured, they are half-natured, since they only have what is not blood, not muscle, not nerve, but what tendons, ligaments and bones are. They are patched together out of it. Furthermore, they are characterized by the fact that they later express themselves in chorus. And what they express indicates two things to us. First, how they actually come to do a job there under the supervision of Mephistopheles; but at the same time, this also tells us something about their nature. The lemurs express themselves in such a way that one hears in their quivering tones:

We will help you immediately,
And, as we have half heard,
There is even a wide land,
We shall get it.

So the lemurs are also deceived at first: they have half heard that they are to be given a wide country. They are to dig the grave according to Mephistopheles' plan. But they have half heard and not fully heard that they are to receive a wide country. To this end, they bring sharpened stakes to work with.

Sharpened stakes, they are there,
The long chain for measuring;
Why we were called upon,
we have forgotten.

It sounds in their half-nature, which is patched together from tendons, ligaments and bones, there is still something that sounds and rattles from a call. But what the content of the call is, what they are actually supposed to do there, they have forgotten. They are truly characterized by this. One can say that they are there, but they do not know why they are there. They know half of it, why they are there, they have heard something, but they do not know what they have heard. They have heard a call, but they have forgotten it again. So there they are in front of us, these lemurs, and Mephistopheles immediately reprimands them. He says: “This has nothing to do with the wide land you wanted; only act according to your own dimensions, according to such dimensions as are appropriate for one who consists only of legs and tendons:

The longest one lies down lengthwise.

So the one lemur has to lie down lengthwise, and now he instructs them how to dig the grave.

In the next chorus of lemurs, we are told that there is still something in them of a half-remembered memory that they were once something like human beings, that they come from something like human beings:

How young I was and live and love,
Methought it was quite sweet;
Where there was cheerful sound and merry mirth,
There moved my feet.

— That is behind them, and only half conscious.

Now the treacherous age has struck me
With his crutch;
I stumbled over the door of the grave,

Why was it open just then!

So they half-remember that they come from dead people. Mephisto first tried to come to terms with them, he needs them first.

Now I ask you to remember that I have indeed said many times that we do not carry our physical bodies with us without further ado, and that we only discard them like an empty shell. It is not only our shell, I often said, it is our tool. It contains the forces through which we are connected to the mineral earth. Now I ask you to consider the following: we are, with our physical body, formed on Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth, with what we now have between birth and death. Let us imagine all that has been implanted in us by Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth, I would say, summed up and suggested by everything I am drawing here, and let us imagine that which is incorporated into the earth in that we receive an ego as a tool in the earth, that this ego is incorporated as a physical tool. Let us imagine that within.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

During the time on earth, our physical body again receives what was demanded of it on Saturn, what was formed during the time of the sun and moon. But because the I works in it, what the human being has not through Saturn, Sun and Moon, but only through the development of the Earth, is incorporated. This is the external physical expression of the I. From this, the I emerges in death. What remains of Saturn, Sun and Moon has no place in earthly life; it has nothing to do with the forces of earthly development. The physical forces of the evolution of the earth would never have produced our muscles; they had to be produced by the physical forces of the evolution of the moon. But during the evolution of the earth, the impulses of the ego did indeed produce the bones, and the bones only during the Atlantean evolution, through the salt deposits in the Atlantic Ocean, the ligaments, the tendons. All this is integrated only through the forces of the earth. In this way we carry the earth within us, in our bones, tendons and ligaments. The spirit of the earth lives in them. The same forces live in them that are present in all the mineral, natural or technical domains of the earth. In the composition of our bones, tendons and ligaments, everything that can arise from the mineral-physical natural and technical effects of the earth lives. When we now go through the gate of death, we leave behind our Saturn, Sun and Moon parts. These are destroyed by the fact that they cannot exist in the earth. Bones, tendons and ligaments must destroy the forces of the earth itself, regardless of whether the person is buried or cremated; this makes no difference, the special forces of the earth must destroy them.

Thus, because Faust has died, that which is subject to the special forces of the earth is handed over to the earth, to that earth to which all dead people are also handed over, insofar as they are made of bones, tendons and ligaments. A deep spiritual insight into nature is expressed in this formulation that Goethe gave to this scene, an infinitely deep knowledge of nature! For one should not believe that one has exhausted what remains of us when one says: Well, the physical body falls away from us, and our soul — as we have always described it — continues into the spiritual worlds. — No, there are secret spiritual forces in the whole physical body that remain on the earth. The earth can only retain that which it has produced itself, but it retains only the forces from bones, tendons and ligaments. Bury the human being and let him decay, burn him - in the earthly body itself, despite decay or burning, what remains for all future is always present in the forces in bones, tendons and ligaments! We hand over our skeleton, so to speak, to the earth, and it remains there until the earth itself has reached the goal of its evolution. Our skeleton is taken up by the skeletons of all those who have died before us, and enters into the community of those who have died before us. It would be a superficial view to say: “Everything is transitory here.” Only the form is transitory. The forces that prevail in them are contained in the earth's activity. And if you take the physical forces at work on earth today, if you look straight into the earth, the forces in it that have come about because people have been buried in the earth, or because they have somehow been destroyed, their bodies have somehow been destroyed. The forces that formed the human being are now in the earth, working in the interior of the earth, they are there, they are preserved.

So we can say: Mephisto is initially faced with the task of dealing with the path of the physical body, with the path, with the paths that the physical body wants to take. - That's where he needs the lemurs, I would say, who are not ghostly, but under ghostly beings, phantom beings that are always united with the earthly body as the remains of dead people. He needs them.

Do you know what would happen if what has been ours since Atlantean times were to disappear in our bones, tendons and ligaments? Even today the earth would be close to it, and it would soon be more likely that all people would be born with so-called “English limbs,” with weak and powerless limbs. People would be born rickety, because the earth only has a certain amount of the strength that lies in our bone movements and tendon development. And what we give back in death always goes into later human bodies in a mysterious way. Otherwise, people would be born rickety. And if one is born rickety, it is a sign that one has not entered into a right relationship in one's total karma with those forces that the earth gives again and again and again, and receives back again and again from the bones, tendons and ligaments of humanity.

Thus an infinitely deep, spiritual thought of nature is expressed in the fact that Mephisto has summoned these underworldly spectres, these pure phantom beings, in whose ranks Faust's phantom also enters. We must, of course, grasp the scene quite spiritually. The interpreters of Faust always believed that there were bone men walking around. But they are only the forces that lie in the bones, tendons and ligaments, the supersensible forces. The scene is to be grasped entirely spiritually, only through spiritual vision, in the manner of spiritual vision. These lemurs have what is in man in that he has an I. But the I is outside. But the I is outside. So all the qualities that only came in through the I are gone, are only half present, only echoes. Therefore they are there and also not there. We human beings are only there when we send our I into our bones, tendons and ligaments. They no longer have that. We only understand what we have heard when we send our ego through our bones, tendons and ligaments. They only have the echo; they hear and do not know what they hear; they have heard a call and have only half heard it, have forgotten it because the memory lies in the system that is put together by bones, tendons and ligaments. So, because Mephistopheles first has to deal with the paths that Faust's physical body takes, he, who is a spirit but wants to assert his rights on earth, naturally comes into the necessity of having to deal with the lemurs, as they are meant here, because from them he could snatch the spiritual part of Faust's physical body. After all, the physical body is also based on a spiritual one. He could grasp this spiritual.

Now, to understand the whole, let us recall something we can find in the chapter of the book 'How to Know Higher Worlds?' where the Dweller of the Threshold is mentioned. There you will find that when a person undergoes higher spiritual development, the individual powers that are otherwise united in him in ordinary human knowledge, diverge. I characterized them there according to their abilities. Will, feeling and thinking go their separate ways, each becoming something in itself. Mephisto, who remained behind on the lunar evolution with his own nature, was still familiar with the lunar evolution. That is how you have to understand him. He, Mephisto, is familiar with the lunar development in his practical view of life. But even in the atavistic view of the moon, the limbs of the human being were still separate and not yet united by the ego. So if Mephisto, in his way, wants to grasp the spiritual essence of Faust, he must actually grasp it in its threefold nature. He must grasp it as the spiritual essence of the physical body; there he must deal with the lemurs. Then he must want to grasp it as the second link in the etheric body, which separates soon after death. He is familiar with that, so he must want to grasp it. And then he must want to grasp it in what passes over into the spiritual world and has detached itself from the etheric body. What has been united through the ego does not yet correspond to his realm; he is not yet at home there, Mephisto; the separateness still exists. So he must instinctively attach importance to achieving what the spiritual is of the physical body; there he must let the lemurs work. Now, because he only knows the soul in separation, he wants to catch for himself - he does not know what - the etheric body, which leaves the human being through the lower limbs. So he puts the Dickteufel there to catch the etheric body for him. Then - he does not know how it should be. Perhaps he can grasp Faust's spiritual essence at the third link, at that which wants to ascend into the spiritual world? That is where he places the Dürrteufel. And so he wants to grasp Faust's spiritual essence. But he must, I would say, with devilish instinct, bring together the threefoldness that can convey to him the physical body directly in its spirituality – etheric body, soul-spiritual –.

Etheric body - you see, physics cannot quite cope with the ether that is present because the ether has a strange property that distinguishes it from ordinary materiality. It is not heavy, it has no weight. The usual gravity of the earth cannot hold the ether. Mephisto wants to hold it. He wants to hold it through spiritual beings. Because the ether has already become spiritual, it should also be held by spiritual beings. To do this, he needs the thick devils, who, as spiritual beings, have a certain heaviness. They must therefore be thick-bellied creatures with huge, thick bodies – small, of course, because if they were towering, they would reach too far into the upper regions. They must be designed to be small and stout, their spiritual nature must be earthly, their spiritual nature must be such that it can sustain on earth that which seeks to fly spiritually.

They must therefore be small and stout, and everything in them that is the physiognomic expression of humanity must be clumsy. They must have enormous strength in their somewhat stocky bodies. Therefore, the limbs that are more spiritualized are small; in reality they would have to have small hands, stumps, arm stumps. It is difficult to portray, can only be portrayed if the actors make every effort to move only the lower part of the arms; of course, this must be practiced and learned. But the nose, too, is difficult. It is developed, the nose that has become a horn in the devils, it is difficult; so it is, together with the forehead, the heavy organ that does not connect man with the air, but that works and is formed by its own weight.

Mephisto needs such creatures to be able to hold back the etheric body, which we know takes a different path because it is not weighed down by the earth, in the rest of the earth. He must therefore hire them so that when the etheric body appears from the lower regions of Faust's body, they can grasp it. Therefore he hires them:

Fresh meat! Double your step,
You gentlemen from the straight, crooked horn,
From the old devil's grist and grain
You bring the hellish maw at the same time.
Hell has many a maw! many!
According to rank and dignity, she devours;
But in this last game, too, one will

Canines gape; from the gorge's vault
The fire stream wells up in rage,
And in the boiling smoke of the background
I see the flame city in eternal glow!

This is, of course, the same flame city that appears in Dante!

The red surf... and so on.

Here they come, the fat devils with short, straight horns! He now describes them:

Now, bloated villains with fire cheeks!

So they are in the state in which the lunar creatures still breathed fire. They are “pot-bellied villains with fire-cheeks” who “are really fat from the brimstone of hell”.

Block-like, short, never moving necks!

So everything is immobile; mobility is already semi-spiritual. They are all clumsy and awkward, all so that they force the spirit into heaviness, because they are supposed to hold the light ether. And there he posts them:

Here below lurks, whether it glistens like phosphorus:

- whether the etheric body comes out, which they are supposed to catch —

That is the little soul, Psyche with the wings,

- he sees it as the soul! —

You pluck it out, and there is a nasty worm;

So he wants the etheric body in the form of a dragon, doesn't he.

With my stamp I will seal her,
Then away with her in a fiery whirlwind!

He says very aptly now, by placing the devil's advocate there:

Pay attention to the lower regions,
you windbags, that is your duty;
Whether she likes to live there,

You can't really know.

How should he know, since he has the three members of the soul; he does not really know what to start with!

She likes to be at home in the navel,

That is the region where the etheric body must leave the person first.

Take care, for she will wipe you out there.

So there we have the fat devils with short, straight horns who want to try to shape the spiritual so that it develops earthly heaviness.

Mephisto wants to conquer the third part through the Dürrteufel. They must be very thin guys, again difficult to represent! Very thin, and all spiritual, so nose and forehead together to a horn united, which overcomes the matter as possible, in devilish way overcomes, so crooked and long, because they should achieve it, to become quite spiritual, to overcome the earth heaviness completely. Therefore, they are “Firlefanze”, as spinning tops, move quickly like spinning tops. They must now be employed to catch that which goes into the spiritual world - the third. So they are supposed to chase after the forces that develop precisely out of heaviness, so to speak. That which they are not supposed to get into the heaviness of the earth, they are supposed to develop, like a spinning top, counter to the heaviness, through their long, flexible limbs, which should actually grow out of them. That is how they should develop. That is how Mephisto sets them up:

You winged giants of Firlefanze!
Reach into the air, try without rest;
Arms straight,

— straight means long in this case, that they become thin and long.

The arms are stretched, the claws are sharply pointed,

– so long claws instead of fingers come out –

so that you can catch the fluttering, the fleeting.

– the soul that goes to the spiritual worlds –

She must feel ill at ease in the old house,
And the genius

- in contrast to the etheric body: the genius, which is always soul-spiritual -

And the genius, it wants to get out right at the top.

There you can see how, according to the way man is constituted, the function of the lemurs on the physical body, the thick devil on the etheric body, the dry devil for the spiritual-soul is sharply, clearly outlined!

Now the heavenly host is approaching, the heavenly host, that is, the beings who belong to the spiritual worlds. And the matter is presented in such a way that none of those who can serve Mephisto – the lemures, the thick- and scrawny devils – achieve anything. The heavenly host is coming:

Follow the messengers,
heavenly relatives,
slow flight;
forgiving dust,
animating dust;
to all natures
friendly traces
work in floating
its dwelling train.

These are beings that have not experienced the earthly either, but do not claim to have an effect on the earthly sphere, but only on the spiritual and mental aspects of the human being. Mephistopheles is out of place, he has remained a ghost, a moon ghost, and has an effect on the earth. They have remained in their own sphere. They must therefore appear to him as beings who have not even become human, but are still pre-human, immature, less than children.

I hear discordant notes, nasty strumming,
From above it comes with unwelcome day;
It is the mischievous, girlish banging,
As sanctimonious taste may love it.

And so on. Of course, Mephisto is well aware of the close kinship between him and the angels as spiritual beings. They have both remained spiritual beings. That is why he calls them devils in his own way, but devils in disguise.

They are devils, but in disguise.

Now the battle begins between the host of angels and the demons and goblins down there who are striving for Faust's soul. Mephisto is standing there and must take part in this battle. He instructs his devils because he senses something. What does he actually sense? Yes, he knows the trinity as a soul quality. But that is not capable of grasping the I-unity. He does not believe that in Faust the I-unity is so strong that it holds the trinity together. That is his great error. While he is actually always talking about the trinity of the soul, the unity of the soul is asserted at this moment from the spiritual world, holding everything together. If this unity, this unity of the ego, were not there, the lemures would be able to draw the soul of the physical body to themselves, without it having remained connected to the whole world, to the whole cosmos. The Dürrteufel would be able to grasp the soul, the genius. But because they are held together by the ego in the human being between birth and death, each one goes its way: the body to the earth, the etheric body to the etheric region, that which is soul to the spiritual region, but they remain destined for each other. There remains a connection. And as soon as the connection, which is brought about by the character of the ego, is there, the devil can do nothing. But he is positioning himself quite correctly.

Why do you cower and flinch? Is this the custom of hell?

— the thick-skinned and scrawny devils sense that a different element is coming.

So stand firm and let them scatter.

They scatter roses, namely, as a symbol of spiritual love coming from above.

To his place, every Gauch!
They think, with such flowerbedecking
They can snow in the hot devils;
That melts and shrivels at your breath.

Now they begin, because he commands them:

Now blow, Püstriche! —

Now they blow away the love torment that surrounds them. This is a hot glow for them, which they cannot endure. Now they blow, but they blow too hard because they cannot find the right measure. They have not been taught about what is formed through the evolution of the earth.

— Enough, enough!....

That you never know the right measure!

He also only knows them insofar as he observes them on earth; he does not know them from his own nature, the right measures. But because he was with Faust for so long and saw what Faust needed, he recognizes the measures of men again for a while.

— Enough, enough!
Before your breath the whole flight pales. —
Not so violently! Shut your mouths and nostrils!
Truly, you have blown too strongly.
That you never know the right measure!
That not only shrinks, it browns, dries, burns!
It is already floating along with poisonous clear flames;
Brace yourselves against it, press close together! The strength goes out! All courage is gone! The devils scent the flattery of strangers.

To him, love is only flattery, he turns everything into something purely selfish. And so we see how, through this struggle that unfolds here, how in the imagination – for the whole thing takes place in the imagination of Mephisto, who for a while transports himself back to his old time on the moon – how, for the imagination of Mephisto, the possibility presents itself that he could have the soul in its trinity, while it was actually snatched from him by the unity.

The interesting thing is that in this scene in particular we also find an awareness of the inner spiritual evolution of humanity. Think of what I have often said, that only a certain narrow-mindedness can believe that as far back as people go, they have always looked the same; so spiritually, one imagines the Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, all more or less the same as present-day people, while great developments have been undergone. People who only think about the last few centuries know nothing about what human beings have gone through in the course of the centuries in evolution. But spiritual beings notice this because they look at things spiritually. And so it is so wonderful that we can see from Mephisto's words here to Faust precisely what he, Mephisto, who is of course an old fellow, has gone through the whole evolution of the earth — you know how he says at one point that he once found “crystallized human race”! — yes, Mephisto sees how it has changed:

The body lies, and the spirit seeks to flee;
I quickly show it the blood-written title.

So, what does he actually want? Faust has died. He wants the soul, of which he only recognizes the trinity. We remember that Faust made a contract with Mephisto, even written in blood, a contract. What does Mephisto actually want, MephistoAhriman? What does he want? He wants to invoke his contract. If he shows the contract at the moment when the soul comes out, he believes that the soul cannot escape him. Well, I would rather not speak further on this point in view of some contemptuous words that have been spoken in this troubled time. Since our friends are already being accused of not thinking clearly about contracts, I do not want to develop a contract theory now that could be exploited in turn. Perhaps it could even be said, if I do not take the side of Mephisto in this scene, but rather the side of Faust: Faust would be a real Pan-Germanist in terms of his view of contracts! I do not want to talk further about the plight one could get into, because either one would have to take sides for Mephisto-Ahriman, or one would expose oneself to danger because Faust does not go into the blood-written title, to chalk this up to us as a pan-Germanistic view. So we prefer to remain silent about all the deeper wisdom that would have to be developed if one were to talk about Faust and Mephisto's contract. Let's leave it!

But evolution with its inner meaning comes to us in the words of Mephisto, who points out that times change and with them the impulses that are in the development of humanity. In the past, when the old times were there, he still understood quite well how to catch souls – today we call it superstition, but we know that they were somewhat clairvoyant times. Then the souls were still easily accessible in their trinity; then he could still catch the souls if the matter was well prepared – and after all, he prepared them quite well in Faust. But now, as the fifth post-Atlantic period approaches and the unity of the soul is being established through the ego, he has not yet undergone his full training.

But unfortunately we now have so many means
to withdraw souls from the devil
we come up against the old ways,
we are not recommended

The little people never sense the devil,
even when he has them by the collar.

There he is, but he is not recommended. And so he gets the helpers he needs, who he believes can help him get what he wants: the soul in its trinity. But the fact that it no longer exists in its trinity, in its original form, allows it to slip through his fingers.

It is a curious thing with this Mephisto-Ahriman. The beings that belong to the spiritual world come down into his spheres, and - yes, he actually falls in love with these beings. Goethe quite rightly describes a love scene between Mephisto and the angels. The devil has understanding. And a love affair between Mephisto and the angels is truly an absurd love affair, that is what Mephisto also calls it, it is truly an absurd love affair. But how is it that this absurd love affair can still affect him? That feelings of love arise in him at all? If he had not lived at Faust's side for so long and wanted to beguile Faust by stimulating such feelings in Faust in a particularly enticing way, they would not have crossed over to him. And so here again you have a deep wisdom, a wonderful wisdom. The devil actually has no erotic or other love in the earthly sense. He doesn't have it. Love affair is of course absurd for him, because we know that the earth is the cosmos of love. He is from the cosmos of wisdom. But he is out of place, he wanders around on earth and always wants to incorporate the earth into his realm. This means that he repeatedly finds himself in a position to incorporate into himself qualities that are developed on earth and that no longer fit his nature. In order to gain a soul, he must prepare this soul for the devil, that is, make it suitable for the qualities that Lucifer implanted at the beginning. But in doing so, he himself becomes infected by these qualities and once again makes himself incapable of keeping this soul. You see here in the big picture what happens on a small scale. Imagine that man is also capable of arousing passions, but if he develops them to a certain point, they destroy his organism at the same time. So you can only do it to a certain point. The devil must, as it were, vampirically absorb human qualities into himself so that he can arouse the passions in Faust. But in doing so, he destroys his own true devilish nature. This is how the absurd affair with the angels comes about, and he becomes inattentive and does not even realize that the angels are snatching his soul away. This darkening of consciousness, this transition of consciousness into the subconscious, had to occur in him.

Since we will have the performance today, I cannot say more. I think that enough has been said for the time being to convey a little of the understanding of the trinity inherent in this scene. I think we see, especially when we devote ourselves to such a contemplation, how infinitely deep that is of which Goethe says that he has secretly incorporated it into the second part of 'Faust'.

Those people who were able to evoke in themselves the idea that spiritual wisdom is at work through the evolution of humanity, that it has only receded somewhat in our time, that this spiritual wisdom often only a shadow in all kinds of legitimate or illegitimate occult societies, such people, as isolated individuals, always knew what profound wisdom is contained in Goethe's “Faust,” real wisdom, concrete world wisdom. That is why they have expressed themselves in this sense. And one such man dedicated a short poem to the memory of Goethe at the Feast of St. John in 1880, a poem in which he wanted to express how much he felt at one with him in spiritual wisdom, a man who, due to the erudition of the materialistic age, actually had very little of Goethe in him, very little of substance. And since spiritual science had not yet been born when this man wrote, he only had a vague feeling that this spiritual science lives in Goethe like an instinct. The Faust commentary that he wrote as a result, Oswald Marbach, did not become significant. But in the poem that he dedicated to the great mason's wisdom festival, the Manenfest, to the manes of Goethe — as one used to say in the past when speaking of the immortal part of man, the Manen, the same spirit lives that lives in the Manas – it shows that, as it were half-consciously only in lonely souls, there was always the connection with the great that lived in Goethe's poetry. And so he, who felt connected with the Manes of Goethe, with the individuality of Goethe, says at the Feast of St. John, the masonic feast in 1880:

To you, brother, father, exalted master!
To you, to whom we now, for over a century,
As a sign of our most loyal love in the alliance of free spirits,
We extend our tightly entwined hands; —
To you, the greatest of spirits and the freest of the free!
To whom we aspire to be like; —
We consecrate ourselves to you! We consecrate our sons to you,
That our building may one day be crowned with perfection!

You have striven as we have; but your striving
For self-knowledge, which leads to wisdom,
Was always inspired by the most vital life,
By strength of the creator, which proceeds to action,
To works that lift themselves up to the light,
Around which the splendor of beauty spreads eternally:
You wrestled with God like Israel,
Until you, as victor, conquered yourself!

What mysteriously unites us with you
Will not be revealed to the uninitiated by a single word;
But let it be proclaimed loudly before all the people
Through the purest love, tireless deeds,
Through clear light that ignites spirit in spirit,
Through eternal life's evergreen seeds. —
Onward, O Master! Wherever You have gone,
We follow You with the most ardent longing.

May there come a time again when such words may and can be truth!

Last time I talked to you about the moon flying out of the earth and how that is connected to life on earth in the first place. I can already imagine that you will have many questions. We can deal with them next Saturday. Think about some of them by then. But today I still have a few things to discuss. Some questions may arise.

We have said: As long as the moon was inside the earth, what can be called the reproductive power of animal beings was quite different than later, after the moon had flown out. I have told you that in the time when the moon was still inside the earth, the moon gave the earth those forces that are, so to speak, maternal forces, feminine forces. So we can imagine that there was a time when the moon was still inside the earth. I will sketch this out for you very schematically.

When the moon was still inside the earth, it was not in the center, but a little to the outside (see drawing, left). If you look at the Earth today, you will also notice that on one side, more towards where Australia is located, there is a lot of water on the Earth, while on the side where Europe and Asia are located, there is a lot of land. So the Earth actually does not have land and water equally distributed, but the Earth is such that on one side it actually has the most land and on the other side the most water. So the material on Earth is not evenly distributed (see drawing $.149, right). It was also not evenly distributed when the moon was still inside the Earth. The moon was just lying on the side where the Earth has the inclination to be heavy. Of course, if there is a solid material, it is heavy there. So I have to draw it the way I have marked it there with white chalk.

Now you have to imagine that at that time fertilization took place in such a way that the moon, which was inside the earth, gave these giant creatures the strength to, so to speak, provide reproductive material. You can't say that back then the animals would have laid real eggs. These giant oysters were actually just a slimy mass themselves, and they just secreted a piece of themselves. So that such a gigantic oyster, as I described to you last time, which could originally have been as large as the whole of France, had a mighty shell on which one could have walked around, and towards the interior of the earth a mass of slime. The lunar forces worked on this slime, and a piece of it was secreted. That then swam further into the earth. And when the sun shone on it again – I have explained this to you vividly using the example of the dog – an egg shell was formed, and because this egg shell was formed, the slimy mass of the oyster was again inclined to secrete a piece of itself, and then a new animal could arise. So the female forces came from the moon, which was in the earth, and the male forces from the sun, which shone on the earth from the outside. Now, gentlemen, I am describing a very specific time, the time when the moon was still inside the earth.

Now you have to imagine the following. Today, when the moon is outside, outside the earth, it has a completely different effect. You also know that when carbonic acid is inside a person – I told you this last time – it has a completely different effect than when it is outside, where it is a poison. If you recall animal reproduction today, you must say: the animals have to produce eggs, and these eggs must then be fertilized in some way. So what the moon used to give when it was inside the earth is now in the animals. The animals have these lunar forces within them.

And the moon also gives forces from the outside. I told you last time: even poets know that the moon gives forces to the earth. But these are forces that stimulate the imagination, that make you more alive inside. These are forces that no longer affect reproduction, but that radiate in from the outside and can no longer effect reproduction at all.

So you have to imagine it: what the moon was able to give the earth when it was still inside, these reproductive powers, the animals have appropriated them, inherited them, and now they plant them from one animal to another. So when you look at the eggs of the animals, you have to say to yourself: the lunar forces are inside. But those lunar forces are still inside that worked when the moon was still in the earth. Today the moon can no longer do much other than stimulate the head. So today the moon works on the head. But in those days it worked precisely on reproduction. You see, that is a considerable difference. It makes a big difference whether something is inside the earth or outside of it.

Reproduction is a very strange thing. But again, we have to say that all understanding of nature depends on understanding reproduction. Because through it, the individual animals and the individual plants still arise today. If it were not for reproduction, everything would have died long ago. If you want to understand anything about nature, you have to understand reproduction. But reproduction is something peculiar on earth.

Just imagine: the elephant has the peculiarity of only being able to produce a single young at around fifteen or sixteen years of age. Take an oyster, on the other hand; it is a small, slimy animal. If you imagine this as being huge, you will have roughly the same creatures that I showed you for that time. So, you can learn something from an oyster. But the oyster is not like the elephant, which has to wait so many years to produce a young one. A single oyster can produce a million oysters in a year. So an oyster has a different relationship to reproduction than an elephant.

Now, gentlemen, another interesting animal is the aphid. You know that it occurs on the leaves of trees and can be found as a rather harmful population of the plant world. People suffer a lot from it. An aphid is, as you know, much smaller than an elephant, but it can produce several thousand million offspring in just a few weeks – a single aphid! An elephant, for example, needs about fifteen or sixteen years to produce a single offspring, but the aphid can reproduce in just a few weeks to produce several million from a single individual.

And then there are tiny animals called vortices. If you look at them through a microscope, they are just a tiny lump of mucus, and they have a thread that they wriggle along. They are very interesting animals, but they consist only of a tiny lump of mucus, like if you took a thread out of an oyster, and they swim around like that. These little Vorticelles are now able to produce a hundred and forty trillion offspring in four days – a single one! – so many zeros would be needed to write it on the blackboard. The only thing that can compete with that now is Russian currency!

So you see, there is a considerable difference in reproductive capacity between an elephant, which has to wait fifteen or sixteen years to produce a single young, and such a small Vorticella, which in four days multiplies to such an extent that one hundred and forty trillion offspring grow.

So you see, there are really very significant natural secrets here. And there is a very interesting French tale, which on the surface doesn't have much to do with it, but inwardly it does. There was an important French poet — his name was Racine. And this Racine, it took him seven years to write a play like “Athalie”. So he wrote a play like 'Athalie' in seven years. And in his time there was another poet who was terribly proud compared to Racine and said: Racine needs seven years to write a play; I write seven plays in one year! And so he came up with a fable, a story, and this story, this fable goes: the pig and the lion were once arguing; and the pig, who was proud, said to the lion: I have seven young ones every year, but you, lion, you only produce one in a year. — Then the lion said: Yes, but the only one is a lion, and your seven are pigs. And with that, didn't Racine want to brush the poet aside. He didn't exactly want to tell him that his plays were pigs, but he compared them, because he said: Well, you do seven plays like that every year, but in seven years I do one Athalie – which is world-famous today.

You see, you can say: Even in a fable like that, in a story like that, there is something to be said for taking fifteen or sixteen years, like an elephant, to have a young one, rather than being a Vorticelle, which reproduces in four days to have a hundred and forty trillion young. People already talk a lot about the fact that rabbits have so many young; if they only started talking about the Vorticelle – it's impossible to imagine such a reproductive capacity!

Now, we have to find out why such tiny animals produce so many young, while it takes an elephant so long.

Now I have told you: the sun is the actual basis for fertilization. So, even today, we still need the sun for fertilization. And I have also told you: if there is a heavenly body outside, like the moon, it only affects the head at most, but no longer affects the abdominal organs, so no longer directly affects the reproductive powers. Today, the reproductive powers must be inherited from one being to another. But, gentlemen, in a certain sense, what happens in today's reproduction is still dependent on the moon. And I will explain this to you in the following way, by going back to the sun again.

You see, we have to ask ourselves: Why does an elephant need fifteen or sixteen years to develop its reproductive ability to the point where it can have a calf? Now you all know that the elephant is a pachyderm, and because it is a pachyderm, it takes so long. A thick skin allows the sun's forces to pass through it less strongly than if you were a plant louse and were very soft and the sun's forces could get in everywhere. So the elephant's low fertility is actually related to its thick skin.

You can also tell by the fact that Think back to those huge floating oysters. Yes, a second oyster would never come into being if it only depended on the sun shining on that scale armor, on that thick skin! But this oyster, as I told you, releases a little mucus; the mucus does not yet have an oyster shell, so the sun can come upon it. And by drying the mucus and thereby creating a new oyster, it has a fertilizing effect on that oyster. Yes, when the sun's rays come from the outside, gentlemen, they can only create shells. How is it that the forces of the sun can still have a fertilizing effect?

You see, we have to look at something else to help you understand how the story actually fits together. You may know that when the farmers have harvested the potatoes, they dig quite deep pits and put the potatoes in them. Then they cover the pits again. And then later, when the winter is over, they dig up the potatoes from these pits again, because they have remained good in there. If they had simply kept the potatoes in the cellar, they would have perished. They stay quite good in there.

Where does this actually come from? It is a very interesting thing. The farmers don't know much about it. But, gentlemen, if you were a potato yourself and were buried in this pit, you would actually feel extremely good in there, if you didn't need something to eat. You see, the warmth of the sun in summer remains in there, and what the sun shines on the earth in summer, that draws more and more downwards. And if you dig into the earth in January, the warmth of the sun and all the other solar forces from summer are still there at a depth of one and a half meters.

That is the strange thing. In summer, the sun is out and warms from the outside, and in winter, the sun's power moves down and can be found further down. But it cannot go very deep down; it flows back up again. If you were a potato and were lying down there, you would be quite comfortable; you wouldn't need to heat up, because first of all there is still the warmth from the summer inside, and secondly it comes up quite warmly from below because the solar forces radiate back again. And these potatoes are actually terribly comfortable. It is only there that they really enjoy the sun. In summer they don't get much of the sun, it's even unpleasant for them. If they had heads, they would get headaches when the sun shines on them; it is actually unpleasant for the potatoes. But in winter, when they are buried in the earth, they can really enjoy the sun.

From this you can see that the sun does not only work when it shines on something, but it continues to work when its energy is absorbed and stopped by something.

Yes, gentlemen, now a peculiarity occurs. I have told you: When a body is outside the earth, it has a killing effect, either - like carbonic acid - like a poison, or like the sun here, which produces dandruff when it shines on it; it hardens the living being on which it shines. But in winter, it is not true that the sun works from the outside; it works from inside the earth. There it leaves its strength behind, working in the interior of the earth. And there it also renews the reproductive forces in the interior of the earth, so that the reproductive forces today, in our time, also come from the sun, but not from direct sunlight, but from what remains in the earth and then radiates back in winter.

It is a very interesting thing. It is just like when we breathe in carbon dioxide: then it is a poison. But when the carbon dioxide is inside our body and goes through the blood, we need it. Because if we had no carbon, we would have nothing at all inside us. We need it inside; then it is beneficial; from the outside it is a poison. Sunlight from the outside causes peeling in animals; sunlight absorbed from within and reflected back generates life and makes the animals capable of reproduction.

But, gentlemen, now imagine that you are not a potato but an elephant. You would have an awfully thick skin and would only let a little of the warmth that the earth has from the sun in. That is why it would take you an awfully long time to produce an elephant calf if you were an elephant. But imagine you were a plant louse or an oyster; in that oyster you would be just a mass of mucus near the earth's surface. The elephant is not such a mass of mucus. The elephant is closed off on all sides by its skin, so it lets this warmth, which comes from below, into itself only very slowly.

Now, you see, it is like this: animals like aphids, which also live close to the ground and on plants, have no thick skin at all; they can absorb what evaporates from the earth with the spring with terrible ease, so their reproductive powers are always quickly refreshed. And the vortices even more so, because they live in the water and water retains the warmth of the sun much more intensely, so that the stored solar warmth in the vortices produces the hundred and forty billion at the right season; that is, when they have absorbed enough of what the warmth of the sun is in the water, they can reproduce themselves terribly quickly. So we can say: Today, the Earth gives its beings the ability to reproduce by storing the forces of the sun within itself during the winter.

Now let us move on from there to the plants. You see, with plants it is like this: you know that plants also reproduce through so-called cuttings. So when a plant grows out of the earth, you can cut a cutting somewhere. You have to cut it out properly, then you can plant it and it will grow into a plant. Certain plants reproduce in this way. Where does that come from? The reason why plants have the power to reproduce even through a piece of themselves is because they have the seed in the earth during the winter. That is a very important thing for plants. If you want to somehow encourage plants to grow properly, it is the case, isn't it, that they actually have to be in the ground during the winter. They have to grow out of the ground at all. There are summer fruits, and we could talk about them later. But in the main, the plants have to develop their seeds in the soil, and then they can grow. Sometimes you can also make bulbous plants grow in water, but you have to take special measures for that, don't you. In nature, it is mainly the case that plants have to be placed in the soil and have to get their strength to grow from there.

What happens, gentlemen, when a seed is placed in the earth? There this seed is really placed in the beneficence of absorbing these forces given by the sun to the earth. The plant seed, in particular, really absorbs these forces that come from the sun into the earth.

With animals, it is much more difficult. Those animals that are actually in the earth, such as earthworms and the like, also easily absorb this power. That is why they all reproduce very prolifically, all the animals that are either very close to the earth or in the earth. Worms are also such that they have an awful lot of offspring, and for example just such worms, which unfortunately can also get into the human intestines, produce an awful lot of offspring, and man must constantly exert his own powers so that these worms do not produce an awful lot of offspring. So that if you have worms inside you, you have to use almost all your vital forces to kill these horror stories that you have inside you.

Yes, but plants are able to grow out of the ground (see drawing); down there is the root, then they grow out of the ground, and then they have the leaves, then they develop the flowers and new seeds. But, gentlemen, you know very well that when the flower begins to develop, the plant no longer grows upwards. That is very interesting. The seed of the plant, the germ, is placed in the soil; the stalk grows out of it, leaves, green leaves, and then the flower comes. There the growth is stopped, and the plant now quickly produces the seed. If it did not produce the seed quickly, the sun would use all its strength on these petals, which would be infertile. The plant would get a huge, beautiful flower at the top, with many colors, but the seed would not be able to develop. The plant finally gathers all its strength to produce the seed quickly.

You see, the sun that comes from outside has the peculiarity of making plants beautiful. When we find beautiful plants in the meadow, it is the external sun with its rays that brings out these beautiful colors. But it would make the plants die with it, just as it makes the oyster die with the oyster shell, dries up.

That is why you can see this all over the world. You can see this effect of the sun particularly well when you come to hot, equatorial regions; there all the birds are in the most wonderful colors. That is the effect of the external sun. These feathers are all beautifully colored, but they no longer contain any life force. The life force is most dead in the feathers.

And so it is with the plant. When it grows out of the ground, it has abundant life force. Then it loses more and more of it and in the end it has to gather all its strength; it still puts the very little bit of life force into the seed. And the sun makes beautiful leaves, colorful flowers, but in doing so it kills the plant. There is nothing of reproductive capacity in the colored petals.

But what does the plant do when its seed is placed in the earth? It does not just allow itself to be placed in the earth, but it brings forth growth in the leaves; it brings that forth. If I draw something green, the forces of the sun, that is, warmth, light and so on, develop it. So the forces of the sun rise up in the plant. The plant takes these with it in the seed, while the solar forces that come from outside kill the plant, so that a very beautiful flower arises. But in the middle of it all there is still the seed, which comes from the solar warmth stored up in the middle of winter. The seed does not come from this year's sun. That is just a misconception. The beautiful blossom comes from this year's sun; but the seed comes from the solar warmth of the previous year, which still has the strength that the sun first gave to the earth. The plant carries this through its entire body.

This would not be so easy for animals. The animal depends on the fact that this solar warmth comes more from outside, more from the earth, and is only refreshed. This is because the animal does not absorb the forces of the sun as directly as the plant. But the plant carries the warmth of the previous year's sun through its own body up to the seed in the flower, which has accumulated in the earth.

If you look at this story correctly – it is extraordinarily interesting, wonderfully interesting – then you say to yourself: plants and animals reproduce. They could not reproduce if the sun did not work. If there were no sun, they could not reproduce. But the sun, which is out there in the sky, apart from the earth, it is precisely what kills the ability to reproduce. It is the same as with carbonic acid: when we inhale carbonic acid, it kills us; when we have it inside us, it invigorates us. When the earth receives the sun's rays from outside, its animals and plants are killed; when the earth can give the animals and plants from its interior what is in the sun, they are invigorated and stimulated to reproduce. You can see that in plants; they develop seeds capable of reproduction only from the power of the sun, which they take with them from before, from the previous summer. What makes the plant beautiful this year comes from this year's sun. It is like that in general: the inner life grows from the past, and one becomes beautiful through the present,

Now, gentlemen, the elephant with its thick skin, but the little warmth from the earth and the little sun inside, which he gets from the earth, would be of little use to him, because he is a pachyderm. These forces do not pass through him so easily. He must have stored up a great deal of his own semen from earlier. He has stored up lunar forces. He needs them, of course, for maternal, for female reproduction. He has stored them up. The moon has emerged from the earth, and the animals that reproduce have the lunar forces within them.

You see, there is something that must be taken into account. Of course, someone could come and say: There is such a stupid fellow who says about the former, the earlier lunar forces, that such old forces still live in the eggs, in the reproductive forces. This stupid fellow claims that the present reproductive forces are from the past. – I would simply say to that person: Have you never seen that something that is alive now has something in it that is from the past? – I would show him a boy who looks so much like his father that he is, as they say, the spitting image. Yes, if you then go back – the father could even have already died; someone could have known the father when the father himself was a boy as small as the boy is now, and the person in question could say: Yes, the boy is the spitting image of his father. – But he looks just like him, the way the father was when he himself was a little boy. What you saw there thirty or forty years ago is still in the little boy now! The forces of the past are always still in what lives in the present. And so it is with the reproductive forces. What is in the present comes from the past.

You know, it was considered a particularly strong superstition that the moon should affect the weather. Well, there is also a great deal of superstition in that. But once upon a time there were two scholars in Germany, at the University of Leipzig, one of whom – his name was Fechner – said to himself: perhaps there is a grain of truth in this superstition that the moon affects the weather. So he made a note of what the weather was like at full moon and what the weather was like at new moon, and found that There is a difference; it rains more when the moon is full than when it is new. That is what he found out. You don't have to believe that yet. Such notes are not very convincing. In real science, you have to work much, much more precisely. But he did say that you just have to continue such investigations and see if it doesn't come out that the moon affects the weather.

Now at the same University of Leipzig was another man who thought he was much cleverer – Schleiden was his name. He said: Now even my colleagues are starting to talk about the moon having an effect on the weather. Gosh, that's not true, we have to fight against that with all our might! – Then the Fechner said: Well, the dispute will remain between us men, but we also have women. – You see, that was still in earlier times. When the two university professors lived in Leipzig, the university professors' wives still had an old custom in the city. They put their troughs, their vats, in the rain to get water to wash in. They collected it because water was not easy to come by in old Leipzig. There were no water pipes back then. So Professor Fechner said: Yes, our wives should sort this out. Professor Schleiden and Professor Fechner should do it this way: so that they always get the same amount of rainwater, Professor Schleiden can put out her troughs at the new moon, and my wife can put out her troughs at the full moon! — He said to himself: according to my calculations, she will then get the most rainwater.

Well, you see, the women didn't go along with it. They didn't want to go along with their husbands' science. They couldn't be convinced at all. So it came about in a curious way that a person, even when science is in the form of a man, does not believe in it, like Mrs. Schleiden, and does not say to herself: I get just as much water at the new moon as at the full moon. Instead, she wanted to put out her watering troughs even at the full moon, despite her husband's terrible ranting against Fechner.

That is something that proves nothing. But, you see, it is strange that even today, high and low tides are still connected with the sun and moon. So that one can say: tides occur quite differently during one quarter of the moon than during any other quarter of the moon. That is connected. But, gentlemen, it does not happen because the moon shines on the sea somewhere and that causes a flood, but that is an old story.

When the moon was still inside the earth, it developed its powers and caused the tides. And the earth still has these remnants of the forces themselves, through which the tide arises. No wonder, the earth is already doing it independently. Today it is a superstition to believe that the moon has an effect on the earth. But it once had an effect on the earth when it was still inside, when everything still had an effect on the earth; and the earth is still in this context inside. That is why it determines the tides. But that is only seemingly the case. Just as I look at my watch, I also say: it throws me out at ten o'clock to the hall. — So today the phases of the moon coincide with the tides, because once they were interdependent.

And so it is with the reproductive powers, insofar as they depend on the moon, insofar as they are feminine. And so it is with the reproductive powers, insofar as they depend on the sun, that is, they come from the solar power that is inside the earth.

But all the animals that reproduce so prolifically, up to the trillions, that is, those that can use these solar forces stored up by the sun through the earth, are lower animals. The higher animals and humans have these reproductive powers protected within. Some of the solar power still comes in and constantly refreshes these powers. Without this refreshment, they would not be there either. But from what solar power is inside the earth today, they would not be able to have their reproductive powers properly.

The plant can have them because it carries what lives in the earth from winter into summer through its own body. The plant has the reproductive power from the previous year.

But the elephant cannot have them from the previous year. It has it from a time millions of years ago, and it has it in its reproductive seed, which it in turn inherits from the elephant father to the elephant son. There it is inside. But from what time does it have it inside! Well, just as the plant has the reproductive power of the previous year within it, so the elephant has the reproductive power of millions of years within it. That is why the plant and the lower animals can reproduce from it, because they can still use the power stored up by the earth. These are tremendously strong reproductive powers. Those animals that depend on storing very ancient forces within themselves can only reproduce weakly.

But let us now go back to the time when there were such giant oysters: No sooner had such an oyster reached the point of being illuminated by the sun than it lost its inner strength and could only use the one that came from the earth. But it could still use it because the oyster was open at the bottom. When this oyster was as large as present-day France, it was open at the bottom and could absorb the earth forces that came from the sun. When these animals had then transformed themselves into megatheriums, into ichthyosaurs, when the sun shone on them from above, and they were no longer open from below, they were dependent on the reproductive power that they had within themselves, which was at most refreshed by the sun.

Yes, gentlemen, there must have been a time when animals acquired reproductive powers that they could not get when the sun shines from outside. There must have been a time when the sun was inside the earth, when not just a little of the sun's energy came into the earth, which remains in the earth in winter, for example, for the potatoes; but there was a time when the whole sun was inside the earth.

Now you will say: But the physicists say that the sun is so terribly hot, and if the sun were inside the earth, it would have burned everything. — Yes, gentlemen, you only know that from the physicists. But the physicists would be extremely astonished if they could see what the sun really looks like. If they could build a balloon and go up there, they would not find that the sun is so hot, but the sun is full of life forces, and it develops heat as the sun's rays pass through air and everything. That's where it develops heat first. So when the sun was once inside the earth, it was full of life forces. It could not only give the little life force that it can give today, but when the sun was once inside the earth, these living beings, animals and plants that were there at the time, could get enough of what the sun gave them, because the sun was inside the earth itself. But then these oysters did not develop any shells either, but were just slime.

And now imagine: there was the Earth, the Moon in it, the Sun was inside the Earth, oysters developed that had no shells, but were slime. Mucus formed; it smeared off, separated, and an oyster formed again, and again an oyster formed, and so on. But they were so huge that they could not be distinguished from each other. They were adjacent to each other. What must the earth have looked like back then? It was similar to our brain, where the cells also lie next to each other. There, too, one cell lies next to the other; only that they die, whereas in the past, when the sun was inside the earth, oyster cells, huge cells, were one next to the other, and the sun developed its powers, which it was constantly developing because it was inside the earth. Yes, gentlemen, now consider this: there was the earth (see drawing), here a giant oyster, there another giant oyster, again one, all such giant slime balls next to each other, and they were always reproducing. And today's oysters reproduce so quickly that they can have a million offspring in a short time; the oysters of that time reproduced even more quickly. Gosh, no sooner had the old oyster arrived than the young were already there, and they had young of their own and so on. The old ones had to dissolve again. If someone had looked at it from the outside, how this huge lump of earth was there like a big brain, of course much softer, much slimier than a brain today, how a giant oyster reproduced so quickly - but each one could have had a million offspring again - he would have seen: everyone had to defend themselves against the others because they bumped into each other. And if someone had come, an especially curious one, and had watched from a foreign star, he would have seen: There below, floating in space, is a giant body, but it is all life, constantly producing life, not just consisting of millions of nested oysters, but constantly reproducing. And what would he have seen? Exactly the same thing – only on a gigantic scale – as can be seen today when a human being's tiny egg is examined in the early stages! There, too, it is only a very small-scale process. There are also these small cell mucus vesicles that multiply rapidly.

166 otherwise the human being would not be able to reach his size in the first few weeks in which he is carried. The cells are so small that they have to multiply very quickly. If you had looked at the earth at that time, you would have seen the image of the earth: a giant animal, and within it the forces of the sun and the moon, in the whole earth inside.

You see, I have now shown you how to go back to the time of the earth's development when the earth, sun and moon were still one body. But, gentlemen, I would like to say: in Faust, if you have read or ever read it, Gretchen, who is sixteen years old, says to Faust when he is explaining his religion: “The pastor also says something like that; but it is a little different.” So you could also say: “Yes, the professors also say something like that, but it is a little different.” You say: “Once the sun was one body with the earth and the moon.” — That's what they say; because they say, isn't it: This sun, it was a giant body; then it turned, and then the earth split off as it turned. Then the earth turned further, and then the moon split off again. —- So basically, they also say that all three were once one body.

Then people come and say: That can be proved; it is already being proved to schoolchildren. It can be demonstrated terribly nicely. You take a small drop of oil – which floats on water – and then you take a sheet of card and cut out a small circle, push a pin through the top; afterwards you put it into the water and turn the head of the pin. The little oltröpfelchen split off and go around like that. There you have it, they say, there you see it: that happened once in the world! There was a huge gas ball in the world, just gas; but the story turned, and it was mobile. And then the outer things were just split off, our earth from the sun, just as these oltröpfchen were split off. They can prove that in school. And the children, who believe in authority, say: It happened quite naturally; there was once a huge ball of gas that was rotating, and that's how the planets were split off. We saw it ourselves, how the droplets were split off.

But now you must also ask the children: Did you see the schoolmaster up there turning the pinhead? So you have to imagine a giant schoolmaster who turned the gas ball at that time, otherwise the planets would not have been able to split off! — The giant schoolmaster - in the Middle Ages he was depicted: that was the Lord God with the long beard. That was the giant schoolmaster, and these people forget him.

But it is no explanation to assume a giant gas ball that rotates, and that could only rotate if a giant world schoolmaster had once existed. That is no explanation. But, gentlemen, it is an explanation when you come to the conclusion that the sun and the moon were connected to the earth and that it moved itself. That could move. A ball of gas cannot move by itself. But what I have explained to you here could move. In those days it did not need a world school master, but it was alive in itself. The Earth was once a living being, and indeed one such as a seed is today, and it contained the Sun and the Moon. The Sun and the Moon emerged from the Earth, leaving their inheritance behind, so that today the germinating power, protected in the maternal and paternal bodies of the human being, these powers, which once could come directly from the Sun, still reproduce and today develop the animals, the seeds and eggs in themselves, carry the ancient solar power in their egg and seminal fluids, carry it within themselves as an inheritance from ancient times, from the times when the earth itself still had the sun and moon within it.

You see, that is a real explanation, and only if you understand it that way can you really understand. Then you realize that there was once a time when the moon flew out and the earth flew out of the sun with the moon. We will discuss this matter further next Saturday at nine o'clock. It will still be a bit difficult, but nevertheless I believe that history looks like this so that you can understand it.

In our time, Theosophy seeks to be a spiritual movement that will deepen our entire spiritual life and steer man away from the sensual and back to the supersensible. It does not bring humanity something absolutely new – no, it stands on the ground of earlier times. It is based on what previous generations have worked for us. But even what earlier generations did and knew was not something new; these were also conceptions of the general and great fundamental truths. Each generation and each time expresses what it can understand of it in its own way, adapting to the spirit and circumstances of the time. Theosophy in our time means the realization of the basic truths in the form in which they are useful for our time.

Now let us think back to a culture like that of 600 to 700 years ago. At that time there were not a lot of channels through which anyone who wished could gather knowledge, as is now the case in schools, libraries and so on. We have now undergone the development for this in the last century. The sciences have spread, one always wants to know more and more and to express everything in scientific forms and terms, because man dresses his thoughts in forms to which he is accustomed. Now the time has come when everyone wants to know, learn and read for themselves, and they can also find the way to do so.

In ancient times there were also a few preachers of wisdom and a great multitude who believed them at their command. (The speaker means that the large circle of people who know a little and who currently exist could not be found at that time, besides the individuals who knew more, whose number is not large even now, any more than it was in the Middle Ages.) Those who knew more of the great truths of life, of this great wisdom, which in its present form we call 'Theosophy', were called initiates or adepts, because they had a great and certain experience behind them. And those who have this experience behind them do not speak of these things as if they were speaking of another world, but as if they were constantly living in this world. And that is the case, because this world has become their own. There are always other worlds around us, spiritual worlds, other beings are always at work around us, and they relate to the sensual and physical life of a person in the same way that the colorful splendor of the world of light relates to a blind person. What the initiate has gone through can be compared to the experience of a blind person who has been born blind, has undergone an operation and been given the ability to see the light.

The Rosicrucian method of initiation presents the experiences that a person undergoes when the world of the spirit opens up to him.

As for the Rosicrucians themselves (the speaker does not say it in so many words, but implies that this is the name of an order or association of initiates who practice the same wisdom teachings as those found in Theosophy) - this name has been much discredited by people who knew very little about it and not much more than a few external forms. What one can find here and there in old writings about the Rosicrucians was not calculated to command respect from the outside world. But all this was very natural, because what was really Rosicrucian was actually kept secret until the end of the nineteenth century, because it was only in this century that it was destined to benefit humanity in general. It is only the present-day theosophical movement that is destined to absorb and disseminate the wisdom of the Rosicrucians.

Now (said the speaker) we are not dealing with the history of the Rosicrucians, but with living Rosicrucianism. The system we are talking about was only founded in the fourteenth century, arising from various spiritual seeds.

Rosicrucianism should not be confused with Theosophy in general: it is only one method. But when it comes to linking Theosophy to modern science, the Rosicrucian method is probably the most suitable.

And how is this method presented? In seven degrees (stages) man is led to the knowledge of spiritual truths.

These seven degrees are:

1. Degree: study
2. Degree: imaginative knowledge
3. Degree: knowledge through the occult scriptures
4. Degree: (what is called) the search for the philosopher's stone
5. degree: the study of the correspondence between man and the great world outside (microcosm and macrocosm),
6. degree: merging into the macrocosm,
7. degree: that which follows from the preceding degrees: beatitude.

Let us take a closer look at these different degrees:

First degree, “Study”: This is the acquisition of elementary knowledge of the higher worlds; for, above all, one needs some elementary knowledge before one can actually feel at home in it. But the higher worlds can only be known through an opening of the soul: Then man becomes a seer, in a certain sense already an initiate. Now, not every person can find the way out of themselves – at least not easily – but every person who is an explorer, gifted with common sense, can find their way through study, which would not have been so easy to find on their own. This is a kind of guidance, like using a map to find your way around an unfamiliar area. In this way, many have found what they previously searched for in vain: a coherent body of knowledge that never fails to provide a logical answer.

Here in the physical world, things correct people when they make a mistake: we would find our way here even without a map, even if it were less convenient. In any case, we would clearly see where we could not go and where there would be serious obstacles. This is not the case in the higher worlds: there you have to find your own guidance.

Once a person has absorbed the basic features of higher knowledge, they can be guided to the second degree of “maginative knowledge”. This is the knowledge that behind everything we perceive lies the truth of things, and that the (sensually) perceived things are only parables for the real spiritual (things).

Everything that is understood in science is in itself only a concept of the mind, it only exists in an idea. The task of the Rosicrucian is to recognize things not only in the idea, in the concept, but in the image.

We will give an example in the form of a dialogue, as it might have been held by a Rosicrucian teacher to his disciple:

The teacher: “Observe how the plant grows out of the ground, as an example of its own development, [observe] how it becomes: stem, blossom, fruit. And then understand that all these environmental conditions were necessary for the plant to develop in this way: air, light, earth and all the substances in it.

And now turn your gaze to the human being: a being formed differently. Flesh has come in place of plant substance, and instead of chlorophyll, the red blood flows through this being.

Sensually, the plant also has a consciousness, roughly that of a human being during sleep. The human being has a consciousness that is elevated to great heights. But this consciousness he has had to purchase at the price of being permeated by desires, instincts and passions. That which the plant contains and which grows into a fruit is pure; but on the other hand, consciousness is narrow and limited. And now grasp the pure plant on the one hand, and man on the other, with his higher development, permeated by the stream of passions."

The Rosicrucian (continued the speaker) must come to feel that it is the stream of passions that transforms the plant substance into muscle tissue, the green plant sap, the chlorophyll, into the red blood.

And then it was said: As a human being, you must rise to a higher ideal. Development does not end with this state. If it is to continue, then the human being and his consciousness must take on other forms, become a higher consciousness. He then returns to the chaste, pure plant substance at a higher level. Then the blood without passions has become like the plant sap again. Just as the plant produces fruit without desires, so the human being will then have become a being again whose organs produce without desires.

This ideal is called the ideal of the “Holy Grail”, the image of the cup in which the blood from the wounds of Christ was caught. As soon as the red blood has become chaste and pure like chlorophyll, it will be the blood of the pure human being.

There is a folk legend that tells how the bees came to suck honey from the wounds of Christ on the cross, just as they do from flowers. This image gives us an idea of what is meant. Everything that prevents man from rising above the plant must be killed. To represent this ideal, a symbol was chosen: the black cross with red roses around it. – The symbol of the spiritual ideal.

And it was of this spiritual ideal that an initiated man, a poet, spoke when he said: He who does not have this remains an ever-gloomy guest on our dark earth. (Goethe - see the same quotation in the lecture in Amsterdam.) It is clear that this is something quite different from intellectual knowledge. When we try to look at the whole world through this image, it makes a different, warmer impression on us than intellectual knowledge. It leaves us cold.

When we then face the world with such images, we feel what is happening in the world. Who can look at the black cross surrounded by red roses without shuddering with inner experience and feeling a flood of feelings within themselves? Feelings are creative forces. Because of them, new thoughts are born, a new world opens up for the person, as for the blind man who has been operated on and now sees the light. A new world opens up for the initiate through imaginative knowledge. These are things that are just as exact as the laws of nature.

Third degree: The appropriation of occult writings. In them, one not only gets to know the laws of nature, but also how to penetrate them with the will. An example of this: two experiences of the soul that are well known to us are shame and fear. If a person wants to hide something, then it is called shame, and the person blushes. If a person sees danger and fears being overwhelmed by it, then he feels fear. And then the person pales. These are two examples of how the inner state of mind results in a change in the physical, outer state. A world view is currently coming to us from America that seeks to explain everything the other way around, namely from material things. According to this, for example, a person does not cry because he is sad, but he is sad because he cries, because the eyes and lacrimal glands are under such material influences that tears are produced. This is: completely reversing the truth.

One can see that spiritual knowledge wants to say: everything that happens in the world is a consequence of the spiritual, which is the principle of this world; and man must experience for himself what happens outside in the great world, namely, by learning to understand how the spiritual is expressed in physical forms. You do not get to know the world by describing things and deducing the laws from them (abstracting), but by experiencing them inwardly.

(What followed here about the heart and its symbolic meaning was not sufficiently explained by the speaker to be more clearly reproduced.

Fourth degree: “The search for the Philosopher's Stone. Which involves no sorcery or deception, but something very natural. A writer who, incidentally, knew little or nothing about the secrets of the Rosicrucians, said something right about this point: the Philosopher's Stone is in the hand of every man - but he does not know it.

The significance of the breathing process is this: in the blood, oxygen combines with carbon to form carbonic acid, which the human being then exhales again. The plant inhales this carbonic acid through a process that is also a kind of breathing, even if we call it by a different name (assimilation process). The plant separates the carbon from the carbonic acid and returns the oxygen to man through evaporation. Without the plant world, human life on earth would be physically impossible, at least in the form in which we know it today. But then man must also realize that he is not an independent being; the plant belongs to him, just as his own limbs belong to him. That man could exist alone is an illusion.

And now we must consider that this material process is just as much based on a spiritual process as the feeling of shame is based on the blush of shame, and so on. This process is only an outward sign of an underlying spiritual process. We must understand that there is a real connection between humans and plants, and that changes in one must take place in the other as well, so that there must be a rhythmic connection between human breathing and that of the plant. There is actually a breathing rhythm in nature – but one cannot discuss this in public – which establishes a conscious contact between humans and plants.

But of this it can be said: When man consciously learns to direct the breathing process towards a goal, then he learns with his consciousness to carry out the process that the plant performs: the direct building of forms from carbon.

This is a completely true fact, even if it may sound strange: Man can learn to transform the carbon within himself, the transformation of matter.

The conquest of consciously transforming carbon into living substance is called the “philosopher's stone”. This is the path of the Rosicrucian: to use and master this greatest of all minerals. We now also understand what the man meant who said that we have all held the “philosopher's stone” in our hands without knowing it.

Now, in conclusion, we must again realize that the breathing process is based on and preceded by a spiritual process; that the transformation of carbon is a symbol of the transformation of man's inner being by ascending into the spiritual world; and also that what will be material in the future must first be spiritual.

Fifth degree: “The correspondence between man and the universe, between microcosm and macrocosm. This is based on the fact that everything that exists in the great world is also present in man as essence; and therefore man can find in himself everything that exists in the great world.

We owe our eye to the sun – its light. The eye is the creation of sunlight. And so the human being in his or her entire being is a creation of the universe. Just as we have to learn how to use our eye to see sunlight, we have to learn how to use our inner organs to receive spiritual light. Man must learn to recognize the relationship of external things to the spiritual world - the relationship of the microcosm to the macrocosm. And then he feels how roots expand out of him into the whole great world. Then he must come to forget his inner self completely: to forget the eye for the sake of the sun. Then it is as if the inner being of man has expanded into a whole universe.

Man learns to no longer say “I” in reference to himself, but in reference to the universe. This is the feeling through which man is absorbed in the macrocosm [- sixth degree].

The ideal of this knowledge is that everything eventually ends in a feeling that encompasses the world. And we cannot grasp this all at once, not with phrases like: Man must become selfless, but only along the long and arduous path of the Rose Cross initiation. To possess this feeling and thus understand the world, that is the initiation of the Rose Cross.

Everything that current science says can be understood in this light, but we do not stop at this science; we learn to understand the world and divinity [- seventh degree]. These are the preparatory teachings of Rosicrucianism.

We see that the teachings and methods of Rosicrucianism are based on the teachings of Theosophy, namely that there is a spark of God in man and that the goal is not to gather wisdom about God, but to learn to feel the pulse of the universe within oneself. Then man has become free. The knowledge that man can do this gives us a powerful impulse to act.

This concept is beautifully expressed by a man who knew (Goethe), in these words: “Man frees himself from the force that binds all beings by overcoming himself.”

I have tried to reconcile the theosophical view of rounds and races, as stated in the “Ancient Wisdom”, with the Bible, and have suggested that the Genesis, the presentation of the Mosaic creation document, is to be taken in a truly literal sense, and that one then fully obtains the theosophical view. It should be noted that the true, great religious documents receive their original and real meaning through Theosophy.

To give an idea of what the Mosaic creation document means, I would like to repeat again: we have to distinguish seven rounds and in each round seven races. In the first round we have the archetypes of the mineral kingdom, in the second round the archetypes of the plant kingdom, in the third round the archetypes of the animal kingdom, in the fourth round the archetypes of man. When our present fourth round is over, the archetypes of man will have been formed. We have not even reached the archetypes yet. When our round is over, we will have expressed the human archetypes. The mineral kingdom will have already reached its completion in the round. It will dissolve again, regress. In the next round, the fifth, the plant kingdom will find its completion, in the sixth the animal kingdom, and in the seventh round the human kingdom.

In the seventh round, humanity will be the complete image of the deity in earthly development. What the deity was at the beginning, humanity will be at the end of the seventh round. The deity will have completed its task and will then rest. Nirvana will have been achieved. It will be able to hand over its task to the Masters and to the Master Lodges, to the Brotherhoods, which will then have developed into the complete image. This is described to us in the Biblical record.

The seven days of Creation signify in the esoteric sense seven rounds, so that the first chapter is to be understood in the following way.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: Then God divided the light from the darkness and called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. [Genesis 1:1-5]

I ask you to visualize exactly what I have described as the first round was. It was initially a reddish, brightly glowing sphere that then went through various stages of development to become a violet sphere, then disappeared into the pralaya, only to emerge again as a red sphere. The first day is thus complete. During this round, the archetypes of the mineral kingdom were formed.

Now the second round begins.

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” Before the mineral kingdom came into being, there could be no firmament. The waters represent spiritual substances. These did not separate from each other until the archetypes of the mineral kingdom had been formed, so that chunks now appeared in them. Then God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. God called them heaven and earth. Only the mineral kingdom was pushed into the earthly, the other was still heavenly.

And God said: Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into separate places, so that the dry land may be seen. And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering of the waters he called the Sea. And God saw that it was good. And God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, and herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit whose seed is in itself, and upon the earth:” And it was so. The earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day.

And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth. And it was so. God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven, to give light on the earth: and they did so. And God saw the light, that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

Here it is emphasized that the completion of the mineral kingdom comes on the fourth day. In the fifth round, the plant kingdom will reach its completion. That is yet to come. Now the mineral kingdom will reach its completion. In the fifth round, the plant kingdom will reach its completion. This is expressed by saying: the plant idea will reach its completion. Everything that is now connected with the peculiar life that is in the mineral kingdom will be fully expressed in the fifth round. In the fifth round the mineral kingdom will gradually dissolve, and man will have a completely different relationship to the environment. The plant idea will have been realized. The relationship to the mineral kingdom will no longer be there, so that instead of being surrounded by a world of minerals, in the fifth round we will be surrounded by a world of plants. Everything that man leaves behind today will then be a plant product. There will be no more minerals; then human beings will live in the plant nature as they now live in the mineral nature. Man will be master over the plant kingdom; he will have dominion over the plant kingdom. This is how Genesis expresses it:

And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in all directions under the open heavens.” So God created the great whales and every living creature that moves with which the water swarms, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the water in the seas, and the birds shall multiply on the earth. And there was evening, and there was morning – the fifth day.

In the sixth round, we are dealing with the complete dissolution of the plant kingdom. A high, living animal thought has been realized, so that a difference between living and non-living will no longer exist. One will only live among the living. There will be no element at all as a medium; there will only be animal-like living entities. In the sixth round, everything related to sexual reproduction has long since disappeared; in the sixth round, we are only dealing with living things. Reincarnation ceases in the middle of the fifth round.

And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

And God saw that it was good. And God said, “Let us make man in our image, in the image of ourselves; let them be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the cattle, and all the earth and all the creatures that creep on the earth.” So God created man in his image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth. God said: See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. These shall be for food for you and for all the beasts of the earth, for all the birds of the air and for all the creatures that move along the ground; I have given you every green plant for food. And it was so. God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day. [Genesis 1:24-31]

Everything culminated in animal existence. After the fourth round, the mineral; after the fifth round, the plant; after the sixth round, the animal. In the seventh round, everything had passed into the human. God created man as man and woman, no longer bisexual, but unisexual, and so God rested on the seventh day.

That is the story of the seven rounds. The first three days are over, the fourth day is the present round, and the last three are yet to come. The second chapter presents the story of the fourth round as such. Specifically, the fourth round shows how heaven and earth came into being, that they were created by God, who made heaven and earth and so on. Man was not yet there when the plant was made.

Then came the description of the fourth round. We had the red ball first, which then turns orange, yellow, and turns into a fog. Now the fog turns into the physical. God breathed a living soul into man after he had made him out of the clod of earth - the first two races. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, and put the man he had made there. This is the man who is still asexual. We are still very much in the first two races.

Previously, the plant and animal kingdoms were not so strictly separated. Man had a continuation that merged into the plant world. Then the plant world separated and then the animal kingdom. Even during our fourth round, there was a time - at the very beginning, when the first animals had split off - when humans were still connected to the center of the earth, similar to certain aquatic plants that hang from a long stem. Originally, men were plants, in the days when they had not yet descended into animality. They were still more plant-men, men who had not yet set the plant kingdom free from themselves.

Such a man was called Adam Kadmon. The man who still contains the plant and animal kingdoms within himself, and only later expels them, is Adam Kadmon. Then, in a new verse, on the one hand we have the Tree of Life and on the other hand an increase of consciousness, the Tree of Knowledge.

The Lord God formed man - Adam - out of dust from the earth and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils. So man was a living soul.

And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God caused to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, with the tree of life in the middle of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it was divided into four heads. [...] And the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may eat from every tree of the garden; but you shall not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.” [Genesis 2:7-17]

Verse 16: Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

Now the incarnation begins. The incarnation begins at the moment when Kama-Manas enters. That was in the middle of the third race, and it ends in the middle of the fourth race of the fifth round. Then the text also describes the individual races. But it describes the fourth race in particular.

Among the original Turanians, a kind of betrayal of the deeper secrets occurred. The priests allowed themselves to teach people what were priestly secrets. The soul of man is expressed as the feminine. The incarnated will is the masculine. The soul, the feminine. The initiated priests have now united with the human soul and handed over the secrets to it. This was in the fourth race of the Atlanteans. This betrayal is described in the sixth chapter of Genesis.

But when men began to multiply, the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which were fair [Genesis 6:1-2]...

... for they are flesh. Now God decides on the downfall, the flood, the downfall of Atlantis. That Noah took a pair of each animal into the ark is based on a real event. It shows how theosophy is becoming infinitely relevant to our culture. Not so long ago, Darwinism and the history of creation were still at a different point of view than they are today. In recent years, science has undergone important transformations. It was thought that animals develop through the struggle for existence and through selection; the imperfect perish, the perfect remain. Naturalists are already talking about the powerlessness of the struggle for existence. De Vries, the Dutch naturalist, has shown that the so-called mutation plays the greatest role in the descent of living beings. It has been found that living beings, when placed in different living conditions, quickly develop into completely different forms. You have to put them in completely different living conditions, that is the only real method of producing new species. It is mutation that causes new breeds to emerge. This does not happen gradually, but in leaps. The tomato, for example, emerged rapidly from a plant that did not have the red fruit. It originated in one place and then spread throughout the earth. All other forms of reproduction and development are secondary to mutation.

Now, science wonders: how could mutation once play such a major role? The Atlanteans knew the secrets of the germination power of seeds well enough to accumulate it, even to use it as a driving force. But they also understood how to cross the seeds of animals and bring forth new forms. What lives on Earth now has come about through conscious methods of crossbreeding, through actual cultivation, so that humans have actually created the animal species. From the few animal species, the Atlanteans created the entire living animal world. It is rooted in human nature that he who possesses greatness is inclined to abuse it.

A few specimens were selected from the animals and taken to the Gobi Desert - an ark. The rest perished. This is the basis of the story of the flood. The aberration of the Atlanteans, the segregation of the animals that arose from the mistakes of the Atlanteans, and the rescue of the same with the pure priests in the Gobi Desert. We must now ask: Who bred the races? Theosophy answers: the Atlanteans. But time is also pressing. The wheat, for example, came directly from a world body, from Venus. So we have to make a connection here between science and theosophy. [...]

After man had enjoyed knowledge, he had to die, he could no longer live, he could not at the same time also enjoy the side of life.

... In the first period after the great Atlantean catastrophe, the life of man was intimately connected with the spirit; each human being could be told the nature of his Karma, according to the moment of his birth. At that time astrology was not the dilettantism it often is to-day, but signified rather a living participation in the deeds of the stars. And from this living participation, the way in which each human being had to live was revealed to him out of the Mysteries. Astrology had a living significance for the experience of each human life. Then came a time about the sixth, fifth and fourth centuries before Christ, in which men no longer experienced the secrets of the starry heavens, but experienced instead the course of the year. What do I mean by saying that men experienced the “course of the year”? It means that they knew through immediate perception, that the earth is not the coarse lump modern geology sees in it. No plants could grow on the earth, if it were what geology imagines; even less could animals or human beings appear on it—this would be quite impossible; for according to geologists the earth is a mineral, and there can be direct growth out of the mineral only when the whole universe works upon it, when there is a connection with the whole universe. In ancient times men knew what to-day must be learned over again, namely, that the earth is an organism and has a soul.

You see, this earth soul too has its particular destiny. Suppose that it is winter where we are, Christmas-time or the time of the winter solstice,—then that is the time in which the soul of the earth is completely united with the earth. For when the earth is decked with snow, when as it were, a frosty cloak envelops the earth, then the earth-soul is united with the earth, rests in the interior of the earth. We find then, that the soul of the earth, resting within the earth, maintains the life of countless elemental spirits. The modern naturalistic conception which thinks that the seeds sown in autumn simply lie there until next spring is quite false, the elemental spirits of the earth must preserve the seeds throughout the winter. This is all connected with the fact that the soul of the earth is united with the body of the earth throughout the time of winter.

Let us take the opposite season: midsummer time. Just as man draws in the air and exhales it, so that it is alternately within him and outside him, so does the earth inhale its soul during the winter. And during the time of mid-summer in the height of summer, the soul of the earth has been exhaled entirely; breathed out into the wide spaces of the universe. The body of the earth is then, as it were, “empty” and does not contain the earth-soul; the earth shares with its soul in the events of the cosmos, in the course of the stars, etc. For this reason Winter Mysteries existed in ancient times, in which one experienced the union of the earth-soul with the earth. There were Summer Mysteries too, in which it was possible to perceive the secrets of the universe, when the soul of the initiate followed the soul of the earth out into the cosmic spaces and shared in its experiences with the stars.

The old traditional remnants still extant to-day can show that men used to be conscious of such things. Long ago,—it happened to be actually here, in Berlin—I often used to spend some time with an astronomer who was very well known, and who agitated violently against the very disturbing idea that the Easter Festival should fall on the Sunday immediately after the first full moon of spring; he thought it terrible that it did not fall each year, let us say on the first Sunday of April. It was of course useless to bring forward reasons against this idea; for what underlay it was this: If Easter falls each year on a different date, a frightful confusion comes about in the debit and credit of account books! This movement had even assumed quite large proportions. I have mentioned here before that on the first page of account books one generally finds the words “With God”, whereas as a rule, the things contained in such books are not exactly “with God”. In the times in which the Easter Festival was fixed according to the course of the stars,—the first Sunday after the spring full moon was dedicated to the Sun—there was still the consciousness that the soul of the earth is within the earth during the winter, and outside in the cosmic spaces during midsummer time, while in spring it is on its way out towards cosmic space. The Spring Festival, the Easter Festival, cannot therefore be fixed on a particular day, in accordance with earthly things alone, but must take into account the constellations of the stars. A deep wisdom lies in this, coming out of an age in which men were still able to perceive the spiritual nature of the year's course through an ancient instinctive clairvoyance. We must again come to this. And we can come to it again, in a certain sense, if we grasp the tasks of the present time by connecting them with what we have discussed and studied together here.

On several occasions I have stated here that amongst the spiritual Beings with whom man is united every night in the way I have described—for instance, with the Archangels through speech—there are some Beings who are the ruling spiritual powers for a particular period of time. During the last third of the nineteenth century, the Michael period began, that period in which the spirit otherwise designated in writings as Michael, has become the most important one for the concerns of human civilisation. Such things repeat themselves periodically. In ancient times, something was known about all these spiritual processes. The old Hebrew period spoke of Jahve. But it always spoke of the “countenance of Jahve or Jehovah” and by “countenance” it meant the Archangels, who were actually the mediators between Jahve and the earth. And when the Jews were awaiting the Messiah on earth, they knew: the Michael period, in which Michael is the mediator for Christ's activity on earth, is here; only the Jews misunderstood this in its deeper connection. Since the seventies of the nineteenth century the time has once more come on earth in which the Michael force is the ruling spiritual power in the world, and in which we must understand how to introduce the spiritual element into our actions, and how to arrange our life out of the spirit. “Serving Michael” means that we should not organise our life merely out of the material, but that we should be conscious that Michael, whose mission it is to overcome the base Ahrimanic forces, must, as it were, be our genius in the development of our civilisation.

Now he can achieve this if we remember how we can link again in a spiritual sense to the course of the seasons. There is really a deep wisdom in the whole world process, manifested in our being able to unite the Festival of the Resurrection of Christ Jesus with the Spring Festival. The historical connection (I have often stated this) is absolutely correct: the Spring Festival, i.e. the Easter Festival, can only fall on a different day each year, because it is something that is seen from the other world. It is only we on earth who have the narrow-minded conception that “time” is continuous, that every hour is just as long as another. We determine time mathematically, by our earthly means alone, whereas for the real spiritual world, the cosmic hour is endowed with life. One cosmic hour is not like another, but shorter or longer than another. Hence we are always likely to err when we try to determine from the earth what should be determined from a heavenly standpoint. The Easter Festival is rightfully determined in accordance with the heavens.

What is the nature of this festival? It is the festival that should remind us, and once did remind people in the most living manner, that a Divine Being descended to the earth, took His dwelling in the human being, Jesus of Nazareth, in order that during the time in which mankind was approaching the Ego evolution, human beings might find their way back, in the right way, through death into spiritual life. This I have often described. Thus, the Easter Festival is the festival in which man contemplates death and the immortality which follows it, through the Mystery of Golgotha. We look at this springtime festival aright when we say: The Christ has strengthened man's immortality through His own victory over death; but we human beings understand the immortality of Christ Jesus in the right way only when we acquire this understanding during our life on earth, i.e. if we awaken to life within our souls our connection with the Mystery of Golgotha, and are able to free ourselves from the materialistic conception which takes away from the Mystery of Golgotha all its spiritual nature. To-day the “Christ” is hardly taken into consideration, but only “Jesus”, “the simple man of Nazareth.” One would almost blush before one's own scientific knowledge if one were to admit that the Mystery of Golgotha contains a spiritual mystery in the midst of earth-existence, namely, the Death and Resurrection of the God.

But when we experience this in a spiritual manner, we prepare ourselves to experience other things also in a spiritual manner. It is for this reason so important for modern man to gain the possibility of experiencing the Mystery of Golgotha above all as something entirely spiritual. He will then be able to experience other spiritual things, and will find through the Mystery of Golgotha the paths leading into the spiritual worlds. At the same time, man must understand the Resurrection in connection with the Mystery of Golgotha, while he is still alive; and if he is able to understand the Resurrection in his feelings while he is alive, this will also enable him to pass through death in the right way. This means that death and resurrection, contained in the Mystery of Golgotha, should teach man to invert the relationship: to experience resurrection inwardly, within the soul, during life, so that after having experienced this inner resurrection in his soul, he may go through death in the right way. This experience is the exact opposite of the Easter experience. At Easter we should submerge ourselves in Christ's Death and Resurrection. But as human beings we must be able to submerge in what is given to us as the resurrection of the soul, in order that the risen human soul may go through death in the right way. Just as in the spring we acquire the real Easter feeling in seeing how the plants spring up and bud, how Nature reawakens to life and overcomes winter's death, so we are able to acquire another feeling when we have lived through the summer in the right spirit and know that the soul has ascended into cosmic spaces; that we are approaching autumn, that September and the Autumn Equinox are drawing near; that the leaves which were shooting so green and fresh in the spring, are now turning yellow and brown, are withering away; that the trees stand there almost bare of their leaves; Nature is dying. Yet we understand this dying Nature when we look into the fading process, when the snow begins to cover the earth: and say: the soul of the earth is withdrawing again into the earth and will be fully within the earth when the winter solstice has come.

It is possible to experience this autumn season just as intensely as we experience springtide. Just as we can experience the Death and Resurrection of the God in the Easter season in spring, so can we experience in the autumn the death and resurrection of the human soul, i.e. we experience resurrection during our life on earth in order to go through death in the right way. Moreover, we must understand what it means for us and for our age that the soul of the earth is exhaled at midsummer into the world's far spaces, is there united with the stars and then returns. He who fathoms the secrets of the earth's circuit during the course of the year will know that the Michael force is now descending again through the Nature-forces—the Michael force which did not descend in former centuries. Thus we can face the leafless autumn, inasmuch as we look towards the approach of the Michael force out of the clouds. The calendars show on this day the name of “Michael”, and Michaelmas is a country festival: yet we shall not experience the present spiritually, linking human events on earth with Nature's events, until we understand again the year's course and establish festivals of the year as they were established in the past by the ancients, who were still endowed with their dreamy clairvoyance. Men of old understood the year, and out of such mysteries, which I could to-day outline only briefly, they founded the Christmas, Easter and Midsummer (St. John) festivals. At Christmas time we give each other presents and do certain other things as well; but I have often explained in the Christmas and Easter lectures I have given here, how very little people still receive to-day from these festivals, how everything has taken on a traditional, external form. When, however, the festivals which we celebrate without understanding them, will again be understood, then we shall have the strength to establish out of a spiritual understanding of the year's course, a festival which only now for present-day humanity, has real significance: this will be the Michael Festival. It will be a festival in the last days of September, when autumn approaches, the leaves wither, the trees grow bare and Nature faces death,—just as it faces a new budding life at Easter time,—and when we experience in Nature's fading life, how the soul of the earth is then united with the earth and brings with it Michael out of the clouds. When we acquire the strength to establish such a festival out of the spirit,—a festival that brings with it once more a feeling of fellowship into our social life,—then we shall have established it spiritually: for we shall then have founded something in our midst which has the spirit at its source. Far more important than other reflections on social conditions—which can lead to no results in our present chaotic conditions, unless they contain the spirit—would be this: that a number of open-minded people should come together for the purpose of instituting again on earth something proceeding out of the universe, as, for instance, a Michael Festival. This would be the worthy counterpart of the Easter Festival, but a festival taking place in autumn, an Autumn Festival. If people could determine upon something, the motive to which can be found only in the spiritual world, something which can kindle feelings of fellowship amongst those who assemble at such a festival—arising out of the fullness and freshness of the human heart through immediate contact—then something would exist which could bind men together again socially.

For in the past, festivals used to bind human beings strongly together. Just think, for instance, of all that has been done and said and thought in connection with festivals for the whole of civilisation.

This is what entered physical life through the establishment of festivals directly out of the spirit. If men could determine in a dignified worthy way to establish a Michael Festival during the last days of September, this would be a most significant deed. But the courage would have to be found amongst them not merely to discuss external social reforms, etc., but to do something that connects the earth with the heavens, that reconnects physical with spiritual conditions.

Thus something would again take place amongst men, constituting a mighty impulse for the continuation of our civilisation and our whole human life; because the Spirit would once more be introduced into earthly conditions.

There is naturally no time to describe to you the scientific, religious and artistic experiences which could arise, just as in the ancient festivals—through such a new festival, established in a great and worthy way out of the spirit. How much more important than all that is going on to-day in the shape of social tirades would be such a creating out of the spiritual world. For what would that imply? It implies a great deal for an insight into man's inner nature if I can fathom his way of thinking, if I can really understand his words aright. If to-day one could see the working of the whole universe when autumn approaches, if one could decipher the whole face of the universe, and acquire creative force out of it, then the establishment of such a festival would reveal, not only the will of human beings, but also the will of Gods and Spirits. Then the Spirit would again be among mankind!

The theme of this lecture has been taken from the impulses arising in the times through which we are passing. Now that so many nations are fighting, we seem to be called upon to turn our inner vision upon such living forces and realities as are found among the nations. And in so far as it is possible to mention these forces and realities, these “folk-souls,” they shall be the subject of our talk to-night.

It is already hard enough nowadays to speak (as we intend to do) of the individual soul in a spiritual-scientific manner. It is no easy task in the face of the widespread materialism of our day to uphold the true inner and genuine existence of the individual soul; for this is nowadays doubted and denied on every hand. Materialistic thought, because of its determination to remain on the firm ground of natural science, often deems it its duty to reject the psycho-physical in its true meaning. And remote as is the conception of the life of the individual from this way of thinking, that which can be designated as “folk-soul” is still further removed from its grasp. For, says the naturalistic school, can the soul of a people be anything more than the manifestation of all its confluent individual souls, anything more than which binds together a given community of men and women while having no real existence except in separate human individuals? In the first lecture which I delivered this winter¹ I pointed out that the great events of our times, the sacrifice of so many lives obliged us to turn our eyes to the “folk-souls” as to something real. Whether he is fully conscious of it or not, the man who sacrifices himself in obedience to the destiny of the day, does believe the sacrifice which he makes to the folk-soul to be made to something real, something true, something that lives and has an inner being of its own. Even our modern philosophers, who are so averse to the spiritual attitude, cannot, when they come to enquire more deeply into the relations of history and human life in communities; dispense with the idea of a group soul, cannot, that is to say, do without the idea of a “folk-soul.” Thus Wundt, the Leipzig philosopher, who is so highly esteemed, and who certainly cannot be accused of any inclination towards the spiritual-scientific view of things, cannot avoid seeing in the group spirit something real, something to which he attributes an organism and even a personality.

Facts like these make one realise that the man who concerns himself with philosophical matters must at least draw near to what Spiritual Science has to give, and that it is simply for lack of familiarity with Spiritual Science that people hold the spiritual life and spiritual reality to be mere appendages of external reality. Wundt sees in the language, customs and religious views, as lived by a whole people, a certain organism; he even says that this life expresses a certain personality. But ordinary philosophy has not yet achieved a genuinely spiritual-scientific approach to the problem. To do this it would have to start from the fundamental principles to which attention was drawn in yesterday’s lecture. {i.e., The Human Soul in Life and Death, Berlin, 26th November, 1914, already available on your website; in the first paragraph of the lecture on 26th (note 1) is also reference to this lecture.}

It was pointed out that there exists a method of developing the human soul by the quickening of its inner powers and by the conquest of its inner conflicts. In this way the human soul is prepared for the vision of the spiritual world and is raised to the experience which can he expressed by saying that in the spiritual world one feels oneself to be living as a thought in the mind of a higher being. Just as our own thoughts live in us, so through soul development can we feel ourselves to be living as the thought of spiritual beings of a higher order. And it was also pointed out that that which is comprised by the psycho-spiritual element in man, that which throughout ordinary sleep lives outside the human body, is clarified and illumined by this soul development. Man can then know himself to be in that state wherein he generally lives in unconsciousness from the moment he goes to sleep till the moment when he wakes; he knows himself to be living in his own spiritual mode of being, and therefore in his own higher existence, just as he ordinarily knows himself to be living in his physical mode of being in external nature. But we also showed why in his heavy sleep life, the soul of man cannot be illumined with the consciousness of his spiritual mode of being. From the moment he drops asleep to when he awakes, man is filled with the desire to sink back into his physical body. And this desire has the effect of clouding over and obscuring that which the soul would experience if, freed from the body in sleep, it were at rest in the heart of the spiritual world. For Spiritual Science has grasped the fact that the soul is an independent entity which knows itself to be free of the body, that this soul cannot know anything of the condition in which it enters the state of sleep every day, cannot know why in this state its consciousness is obscure and dim. But in learning to know the peculiar character of the body-free human soul the Spiritual Investigator also learns to know what it is to sink back into the body at the moment of awaking. And at this point we must state a very important tenet of Spiritual Science, a very important result of Spiritual Investigation.

The Spiritual Investigator experiences consciously this act of sinking down into the physical body. He contrives to experience consciously what in sleep is unconscious, and, in the same way, he experiences the manner in which the soul, sunk again into the body, lives in this body. And he knows that while the soul’s consciousness is clouded in the state of sleep, yet when it sinks down into the body and lives in the body, it is then more “awake” than it could be through its own powers. Just as in sleep, owing to the desire of which we spoke, the soul is duller and less clearly conscious than it could be by its own powers, so during the day is it more awake, brighter, more illumined than it could be through its own strength. By sinking down into the body, the soul can participate in that which it experiences in the body. But through this process of sinking down, the soul’s life becomes a more awakened one than it would be with the help of only such forces as it could itself bring to the task.

And thus is shown to the Spiritual Investigator the truth of the saying that whatever appears in the external world as purely “physical” is in reality permeated with the spiritual, that fundamentally the spiritual inhabits everything physical. As man enters the inner light of his soul, so does he sink down into his body and know that he is not only body, but soul and spirit throughout. And the psychic element which he apprehends as he sinks down into his body, is something that leads not only a personal, but a supra-personal spiritual life, something that eludes us in the state we traverse between falling asleep and awaking, but which we actually live through when we sink down into the body. In our body we come in contact, amongst many other spiritual entities, with what may be called the “folk soul.” This “folk-soul” animates our body through and through. With our body we are not given only corporeal materiality. No, with the body which we use as our instrument between birth and death, we are also given that which animates our body and which is not one and the same thing as our own “personal soul.” That which unites itself with our personal soul when we sink down into the body is the “folk-spirit,” the “folk-soul.” When we fall asleep we abandon, in a sense, the habitation of the folk-soul to which we belong. The Spiritual Investigator is not afraid of the charge of Dualism (which would contradict Monism) which is brought against him when he points out that man is dual, that every time he goes to sleep he falls apart from unity into duality. He fears this charge of dualism as little as does the chemist when he says of water that it consists of hydrogen and oxygen. In men, regarded as external physical forms, there exists not only the individual soul that goes from one life to another, re-embodying itself in successive lives on earth; no, in the physical forms we see walking about there lives yet another psychic element—the folk-souls, actual and conscious through and through. But consciousness permeates the folk-soul in a different manner from what it does in the case of the individual human soul; and in order to show how different in kind is this folk-soul, we wish to draw attention to the following considerations.

Faced with external reality man’s response is determined by his whole character, by the particular colouring of his soul life, and is expressed in one of two ways. Either he will give himself up at once, in the observation of things, to the objectivity of the external world, or else, feeling but little inclination to cast his eye towards the horizon of the external world, he will live in increasing familiarity with the ebb and tide of his own soul. We meet this contrast in Goethe and Schiller. Goethe’s thought, which has rightly been named “concrete,” lights upon things and spreads itself over them. It lives in suchwise that Goethe shares the life of things and at the same time breathes in their spirit like a draught of spiritual air. Schiller’s gaze did not rest so much on the things around him, but was turned inwards on to his own soul with its secret pulsations, its own incessant rise and fall. Now, what lives in history as folk-soul is so constituted that the external world is not presented to it as it is to the individual human soul. As the objects around us in nature are present to us, so are we ourselves present to the folk-soul. Our souls, which re-enter our bodies when we awake from sleep, are at the same time “objects of observation” for the folk-souls that enter into us, just as the things in nature are our objects of observation. When we sink down into the body, I will not say that we are “seen” by the folk-soul, but its strength and activity pulsate as though voluntarily through our being. The folk-soul is focussed upon us.

But a distinction now arises, for the folk-soul may be directed more towards what enters the body than towards what enters the individual soul of man. The distinction was made clear by the example of Goethe in the case of the individual human soul in relation to nature. In the same way, the will impulse of tle folk-soul may, as it were, seize upon the individual soul, may give itself up to the individual soul; or it may live more within itself, as was illustrated by the case of Schiller; it may withdraw into what it regards as its own possession and give itself up to that with the help of human corporeality. Thus we can recognise in the folk-soul a consciousness of personality for which our souls are, as it were, what nature is for us. Much more could be said about folk-souls and their special characteristics in relation to certain peculiarities of the human soul. But this much is clear. Just as individual human souls vary amongst themselves and in their relation to the world according as their gaze is fixed outwards or inwards, so will the folk-souls be related in different ways to the human souls comprised in their several peoples. And the manner in which the folk-souls are related to the individual souls of men is what determines the course of history, of what actually happens in the world. In this way are the folk-souls differentiated from one another, in this way do they live their invisible lives within what we call human history. I should like to try and tell you what Spiritual Research has to say about the nature of folk-souls—at least in connection with a few genuine and real folk-souls. Those of my listeners who have attended the lectures designed for a smaller circle of students, will know that this interpretation has not been called forth by the great events of the present time, but that I have always presented these ideas in the same way, as the outcome of Spiritual Investigation into the folk-souls. I have done this for many years, before the impulse of the present caused the minds of men to look more closely into the inner life of nations.

In considering the life of folk-souls as they have been lived in history, we could go a long way back in the evolution of humanity, as this evolution is revealed by Spiritual Research. But we shall only go back to that point in the history of mankind which is more or less fitted to throw light on the topics that interest us most to-day. We come upon the track of a special kind of folk-soul if we go back to the life of Ancient Egypt, which was related to Chaldean, Babylonian and Assyrian life and was the forerunner of the life of Greece and Rome in the evolution of mankind. Now the Spiritual Investigator speaks of actual folk-souls which fulfilled themselves in the life of Egypt, Chaldea, Assyria and Babylon just as the individual soul fulfils itself in the human body. When we say that folk-souls have an organism and a personality, we are not speaking symbolically. For just as in the individual human body a personal and self-conscious soul lives out its life, so (equally surely) does a self-conscious folk-soul, supernaturally apprehensible, live out its life in the manner we have described. Moreover, in preparing one’s soul in the manner I have frequently explained how one can sink down into the folk-soul.

The peculiar characteristic of the folk-souls that formed the foundation of life in Egypt, Chaldea, Babylon and Assyria was this: these souls led their own lives to a very full extent—an extent only distantly approached by the lives of the peoples of Asia and Africa to-day—so that they gave themselves up but little to the individual, separate souls of men. The individual soul of man, living its own bodily life identified itself with the folk-soul by a certain extinction of its own individuality. The folk-soul fulfilled itself far more completely in what men accomplished than in the individual lives of these men. And this is what gives the Egyptian and the Chaldean-Babylonian-Assyrian culture its peculiar character.

Spiritual Science shows that the folk-souls, being invisible, are related to the spiritual element pervading all material things. Because man has of late withdrawn into his own soul, nature has come to stand at the opposite pole, and to appear to him as something inanimate, bereft throughout of soul and spirit. When the Ancient Egyptian or the Ancient Chaldean looked out upon the world, he saw with a clarity of vision that could never be equalled in later periods, that the material was everywhere the expression of the spiritual—he saw this in the progress of the stars, in the movements of the heavenly bodies, in the movements reflected in cloud and sea, and in the formation of dry land out of the watery element. just as one human being looking at another sees the movements and changes in the face before him as the expression of its possessor’s soul, so did the Egyptian or the Chaldean who was united with his folk-soul in the manner we have described, perceive what is nowadays called the “astrological” aspect of the world as the outcome of the fact that all outer, all material things do but reveal the physiognomy of what lies behind them and speak but of the spirit within. Thus heaven and earth became endowed with soul; or rather, since the folk-soul still found utterance in him, man saw in all the gestures of nature, in all her outer physiognomy a spiritual element at work.

After this, the inner progress of mankind consisted precisely in the fact that in the course of time the activity of the Egyptian and Chaldean folk-soul was replaced by that of the Greek and Roman folk-souls. The Greek and the Roman folk-souls are distinguished from the Egyptian and the Chaldean in that they are less absorbed in themselves and give themselves up lovingly to human individuality. Thus in Greek culture we see the first glimmerings of what may be called the valuation of the human individual, even if this individual sinks down into the bosom of the folk-soul; and as a result of this peculiar relation of the individual soul to the folk-soul we can point to the great things achieved by the Greek folk-soul in art, and poetry and philosophy. In order to make my views fully comprehensible I must now introduce a short survey of what can be said about the individual human soul.

Spiritual Science is hardly likely to regard this human soul with such primitive simplicity as is done by ordinary science. The Spiritual Investigator does indeed regard the human soul as a living unity that fulfils itself in the life of the Ego. But just as light passing through a prism breaks up, as it were, into different colours, from red and gold through green into blue and violet, so with equal truth can it be said that through contact with the outer world which is, as it were, the prism of the soul, man’s unified psychic life is divided into its three most important manifestations. In Spiritual Science these are designated as the “Sentient Soul,” the “Rational Soul”² and the “Consciousness Soul.”³ It is easy—a child can see how easy—for those who believe themselves to be safely entrenched in a genuinely scientific system to mock at such a “dismembering” [Gliederung] of the human soul. But just as it is impossible to acquire any knowledge of light without observing it in relation to the matter of the prism and seeing it broken up into the band of the rainbow of colours, so is it impossible to know the individual soul if we do not see its light broken up into separate rays by contact with the external world; into the ray of the Sentient Soul, the ray of the Rational Soul, and the ray of the Consciousness Soul. If we consider the Sentient Soul then we shall realise that the soul develops as Sentient Soul when it lives primarily within itself, when its own psychic forces, even when they reside in the body, strive, as it were, to break loose from the external world. Just as the light that has been decomposed by the prism is at its strongest in the yellow-red part of the spectrum, so does the soul live most intensely in the Sentient Soul. The Consciousness Soul, on the other hand, resembles that part of the light that is weakest, that is most like darkness—the blue-violet portion of the spectral band. The Consciousness Soul fulfils itself primarily in experiences where there is an effort to break loose from the inner life of the soul, where the body and the forces of the body play the outstanding part. The Sentient Soul, which embodies the actual life of the psyche, with its impulses, its instincts, and its passions, is thus quite untouched by the Consciousness Soul, whose sovereignty holds only within its subjection to the body. But between these two there lives the Rational or Mind Soul, which stands to the total life of the psyche in much the same relation as does the green in the spectrum to the red-yellow portion on one side of it and to the blue-violet on the other. Just as the physicist cannot know the nature of light without learning how it can be analysed into its separate colours, so the Spiritual Investigator cannot come to any knowledge of the human soul without first analysing it into the separate prismatic rays of the Sentient, the Rational and the Consciousness Souls.

This breaking-up of the psychic life into the separate rays does not occur everywhere in the same way. It must be remembered that man does not pass from one life to another in the same way all the world over. As we have often said, the souls that have appeared in our days have in their earlier lives known, say, the period of Egypt, Chaldea and Babylon, the period of Greece and Rome, and have thus had occasion to live through the various early civilisations. But even within the historical sequence, the human soul does not everywhere fulfil itself in the same way. On the contrary, how a soul fulfils itself depends upon how (when it sinks down into the body) it responds to the claims made upon it by the folk-soul. Such a folk-soul as was present, for instance, in Ancient Egypt or Chaldea is particularly favourable to the development of the Sentient Soul in man, and in point of fact we find the most powerful assertion of the Sentient Soul in the individual lives of the Ancient Egyptian and of the Ancient Chaldean and Babylonian period. These folk-souls preserved themselves and prepared the body of the individual in such a way that they permeated this body with their own mode of being. Owing, therefore, to the racial constitution of their bodies, these peoples could fulfil their souls in accordance with the particular colouring of the Sentient Soul. We see that the most powerful and intensive fulfilment of human individuality occurred in the Sentient Soul under the influence of the Egypto-Chaldean folk-soul.

If, now, we follow the path of historical development that leads to the Greek and then to the Roman civilisation (resembling each other in a way, though Roman law as something that is not dependent upon separate isolated individuals, but is brought about by the folk-soul living itself into the bodies of Greek and Roman citizens. We have thus in historical time three successive spheres of development, sharply divided from one another by the folk-souls whose province they are. First, the work of the Egypto-Chaldean folk-soul which gave the souls of men (which at this time were once again appearing clothed in bodies) special opportunities for developing their Sentient Souls. Then in the life of Greece and Rome, the folk-souls were so fashioned that men were able to fulfil their Rational or Mind Soul. And to-day we live in a period (Spiritual Investigation places its beginnings between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries) in which human development has the opportunity of fulfilling itself primarily in the Consciousness Soul. This fulfilment is particularly favoured by the folk-souls of the present day. Our own time must naturally be of special interest to us, and in general it would seem that our particular period had as its task the education of the Consciousness Soul. In other words, the folk-souls set themselves the task of so permeating the bodies of men and women that the soul is enabled to bind to its own service the body in which it lives. Our period is therefore one which lends itself to the development of external science, of external observation. And because in this period of the education of the Consciousness Soul, the bond uniting soul to body is stronger than it has ever been before, there has arisen in our times the urge to observe that external reality with which the body is so closely connected through the senses. The urge arose to promote scientific and cultural tendencies which should aim primarily at the co-operation of body and soul. A Spiritual Investigator can see as a legitimate outcome of the times this growth and development of the Consciousness Soul—the rise of materialism, the tendency to look more and more from the body to the things and facts of the senses. But here again the prevailing colour in the life of the modern world admits, as it were, of different “shades.” The shades are represented by the lives of the various folk-souls of modern times. And it is interesting, from the point of view of Spiritual Science, to bring some at least of these folk-souls before our mind’s eye for examination.

To take, as an example, the folk-souls of Southern peoples—the Italian and the Spanish folk-soul. When the Spiritual Investigator tries to sink himself into the essence of the Italian or the Spanish folk-soul, into these very real and living modes of being, he finds himself compelled to take account of a certain law of world-evolution, hardly known to ordinary science and held by it of little account. We referred to this law yesterday from another point of view. We said: When man has passed through the gates of death, when, therefore, he has entered the supra-sensible world and lives again in higher beings, he stands (with regard to what he has experienced in the body) in the same relation to those mighty super-beings as he stood on earth towards his memories. He looks back on his bodily state, and that gives him “consciousness of self,” just as the act of sinking into the physical body at the moment of waking gives consciousness of self. Thus when we are raised into the spiritual world we find a similar relation holding in the “progression of time,” as obtained in the world of space between soul and body. Through our body we are bound to space; our souls, however, enter a relationship that is temporal. When we have become spirit, when we have passed through the gates of death, we live with our memories, and this life we share with our memories in the spiritual world is like the life shared by body and soul in the physical world. This brings us to the law of periodicity in the spiritual world. What we go through when we raise ourselves to the spiritual world is law for the worlds of the spirit. The spiritual beings do not only experience the rhythmic alternation that we know as we pass from sleep to the waking state, but they go through a number of different states of consciousness in accordance with the periodicity of the times. Only when one has learnt adequately to reflect upon this law can one hope to understand the sway exercised by the folk-souls. Let the Spiritual Investigator study, for example, the Italian folk-soul (and the same thing applies to the Spanish), he will find in it something that consciously looks back to the Ancient Egyptian and Chaldean times. Man keeps his Self-consciousness kindled in his physical existence by the process of sinking down into the body; he preserves this Self-consciousness after death by looking back at his experiences on earth; and in the same way there is a sort of interchange between the folk-soul element that rises to the surface in the Italian people and the ,,Egypto-Chaldean folk-spirit. The Italian folk-spirit looks back on the experiences it had as the Egypto-Chaldean folk-spirit; it sinks down into the Egypto-Chaldean folk-spirit as we sink down into the body on awakening when we retain our consciousness of self. The law of periodicity, rhythmically graded, determines the sequence that extends from the folk-spirit’s activities in Egypto-Chaldean life, through its fulfilment in Italian civilisation, right down to the present times. And the results reached in this way by Spiritual Science from rhe data of Spiritual Investigation can be verified down to the smallest detail if we look at the way the folk-spirit, in which every separate human soul is embedded, fulfils itself.

But time has moved on. The folk-spirit has not retained all the characteristics it acquired in the life of Ancient Egypt and Chaldea. In the course of its development the soul, as we have already had occasion to point out, withdraws into itself. Nature therefore no longer appears to it as she did in the Egypto-Chaldean times, animated throughout with spirit. What the human soul experienced under the influence of the folk-soul in the civilisations of Ancient Egypt and Chaldea is experienced by the Italian folk-soul, only more inwardly in a renewed form of the same folk-spirit. And how can we realise this more clearly than by looking at one of the greatest creations of the Italian spirit ? May we not surmise that a creation such as is evinced by the Egyptian conception of the stars appears before us again in Italian culture, but in a deeper way, more interiorised, more self-contained? Spiritual Science obliges us to expect such a repetition, and the expectation is realised in Dante’s Divine Comedy. The Egyptian saw the whole world as animated with spirit. Dante recreates this conception but in an intenser, more inward form. The ancient folk-spirit lives again and remembers earlier times. In the co-operation of psychic beings in the Egypto-Chaldean and in the Italian folk-souls we can see the super-personal consciousness of the folk-soul at work. The Italian folk-soul is living again a kind of rhythmical recurrence of the Ancient Egyptian folk-spirit. And this living again, even in its more interiorised form, is particularly favourable to the development of the Sentient Soul in the separate human individual living at the heart of the folk-soul. Just as in the time of Egypt and Chaldea the Sentient Soul was given special opportunities for development by the folk-soul, so in modern Italy does the soul live anew as Sentient Soul in the Italian folk-soul, but in a deeper key, coloured as it were with a different shade. Thus does the folk-soul live on, and in those individuals on to whom it is directed (as the human soul is directed on to nature) it calls forth all the forces of the Sentient Soul. We shall understand all the great artistic creations of Italy, rooted as these are in the Sentient Soul, when we have learnt how the folk-soul works in the bodies of Italian men and women. We shall be able to understand the work of Raphael and Michelangelo down to its smallest detail, in so far as it arises from the activity of the folk-soul, when we have learnt the particular shade of colouring which the individual soul will take on under the influence of the folk-soul. Italian culture, under the influence of the folk-soul is a “Culture of the Sentient Soul.”

The culture of every folk-soul has its own peculiar mission. Upon each devolves the task of expressing with special force and intensity some particular aspect of the life of the soul. This has nothing to do with the development of the individual soul. But the national quality which at certain times is realised in the individual soul reveals itself in such a way that it must bring about the intensification of a particular colour in the life of the soul.

In the same way—and I beg my hearers to listen impartially, as to a purely scientific exposition, to the analysis I am putting before them—in the same way as the Ancient Egypto-Chaldean folk-soul lived anew in the Italian folk-soul and stamped its creations as of yore with the character of the Sentient Soul, so does the ancient civilisation of Greece, coloured with that of Rome, live on in the folk-soul of France. But here the spirit of Greek civilisation is expressed in such a way that the individual soul living at the heart of the French folk-soul, is freer from the body, seeks to permeate the body less than was the case in Greece. And just as the Greek folk-soul was particularly favourable to the fulfilment of the Rational or Mind Soul, so in the recrudescence of Greek culture in the French folk-soul we find that special care is taken of the Rational Soul. The inner state of consciousness of the French folk-soul, moreover, rests upon a kind of “remembering” that looks back to the achievements of the Greek and Roman folk-soul. It is difficult but of infinite importance for the understanding of the true course of history to examine the peculiar structure of the mind and consciousness of the folk-soul. The Rational Soul is what is peculiar to the French folk-soul. In Greek civilisation the Rational Soul, though it had torn itself free from the body, could still express the outward beauty of the body, the spiritual quality of what appears to us as corporeal. But as it became intensified and interiorised in French culture, the folk-soul took on another form. The national spirit is no longer translated straight into bodily form in space, as in the Greek statue; it fulfils itself in an “etherised” body that remains a thought-body and can only be “inwardly conceived” [vorgestellt]. This is at the foundation of the whole French character, of the French folk-soul. It absorbs the individual human souls into itself in such a way that these feel compelled so to develop their inner forces that they can imagine them strongly in the outer world. Now, how does one imagine oneself powerfully into the outer world? If the folk-spirit can no longer, as it could in Ancient Greece, realise plastically the spirit that animates the body, then all we have is the mere picture of this spirit in the body, as it has been shaped in man’s conception by his phantasy. And this is why the French folk-soul can only create an inner picture of man and why it tends to set most value on what one projects of oneself into the world, on what one imagines one wants to be in the world, on what is always called “la gloire,” on what one carries in one’s own phantasy.

This is the fundamental characteristic of French culture as it arises from its own folk-soul. And this is why it devolves upon French culture to impose upon the world this conception which the folk-soul has called forth in the phantasy of the individual French mii1. The Rational or Mind or Mood Soul [Gemütseele] works in pictures which it creates for itself in separate individualities. We may therefore surmise that the degree of greatness which the individual soul can achieve under the influence of the folk-soul will be manifested on the occasions when the folk-soul reaches an exceptional degree of development in the Rational Soul [Gemütseele]. The folk-soul comes most fully to life in the creations of those individual minds (its instruments) where feeling animated with understanding enquires searchingly into the appearances presented by the world. Feeling [Gemüt] animated by understanding tends in a peculiar way to work itself free and to command freely. This shows particularly in cases where complete control can be exercised over understanding and feeling; and French civilisation reaches its peak when this particular circumstance occurs—as in Moliere and Voltaire. In Voltaire we have dry understanding permeated with feeling, in Moliere, feeling that rests on understanding. A folk-soul exhibits its characteristic features in those of its utterances which correspond to it so closely that they can also supply the material in which the individual soul will express itself in its own particular colour. French culture is, then, something in the nature of a reminiscence of the Greek, as can be further ascertained by anyone who cares to study with a certain degree of penetration the inner history and development of French culture.

If we consider the French poets as giving individual colouring to the French folk-soul, we shall always find in this folk-soul (not in the individual Frenchman) a harking back to the civilisation of Greece. It finds expression in the deeds and thoughts and poems of individual Frenchmen. It appears in their question: How did the Greeks set about to write a proper tragedy? What did Aristotle say about it? Hence the discussions on the Unities of Time and Place in the Drama. This reacted even on Lessing. Drama was to be made to correspond to the Greek ideal. Moreover, the findings of Spiritual Science in this matter can be illustrated down to their smallest detail. A Greek spoke of himself as a Greek in the conscious conviction of being the represe1itative of mankind. All other nations were “Barbarians.” He had a special justification for this opinion because he expressed in an idealised way the promptings of the spirit. His attitude lives on and comes to the surface in the harking back of the French folk-soul. But because here it is a “remembering,” and because not every remembering is justified (there emerge many memories that are no longer fully justified) this claim of the French folk-soul to be the sole representative of humanity is now out of place. The very word “Barbarian” which is on everyone’s lips points to the recrudescence of this particular feature of Greek culture in the French folk-soul.

Now, just as French soul is particularly favourable to the culture of the Rational or Mind or Mood Soul [Gemütseele], so it is to the British folk-soul that there falls in modern times the task of cultivating the Consciousness Soul or Spirit Soul as such. The education of the Consciousness Soul appears in the history of mankind’s development as something that does not admit of repetition. The Italian folk-soul repeats in an altered form the life and experience of the Egypto-Chaldean folk-spirit, the French folk-soul those of the Graeco-Roman. But the British folk-soul enters the scene of modern evolution as something new. It is the most vivid expression of modern times in so far as these mark that phase of the soul in which it thoroughly permeates itself with the life of the body. The British folk-spirit is so constituted that it favours more than anything else a mode of co-existence with the body. It is therefore favourable also to what is effected through the body and especially what enters the soul through the body. Its mission is to care for the Consciousness Soul, and connected with this is the mission of materialism, which had at a certain point in history to enter into the development of mankind. It is, indeed, the special task of the British folk-soul to give expression to materialism. The individual soul is more or less independent of this, but it remains the characteristic of the folk-soul. We shall return in a moment to the peculiar character of the British folk-soul. But first, in order to throw light on the tasks belonging to the folk-souls, we must cast a glance on the folk-soul that dominates Central Europe and which is called the German folk-soul. And it may be useful to point out that these views of mine are not being brought forward now for the first time as the outcome, so it might seem, of the warlike events of the moment. No—what I say now is only what I have always said.

The German folk-soul is not especially fitted to call forth the particular shades of character of the Sentient Soul, nor of the Rational or Gemütseele, nor again of the Consciousness Soul. It is fitted, on the contrary, to give expression to the unity of the soul which may be said to live in all its three members. I am saying this, not in praise of any particular nation, but I say it in all objectivity, without love or hate, because it is the result of Spiritual Investigation, just as the appearance of light as red or green is the result of an experiment with the spectroscope. It is an objective fact. Just as the Italian, French and British folk-souls encourage the Sentient, the Rational and the Consciousness Souls respectively, so does the German folk-soul nurture man’s Ego, the individual seed within his soul that fulfils itself in his earthly life, the element that sinks lovingly into the body, with which it unites itself at the moment of waking up, but from which it detaches itself again on falling asleep; that which seeks to care for and befriend the manifestations that come to it from the external world but seeks also to befriend and care for everything that aspires to the Spirit. This is why I could say in my first lecture: The German folk-soul is that which more than anything else gives to the individual soul the possibility of sinking down into the depths of the Ego, where the secret is to be sought of what moves men’s hearts to anguish or to bliss. Here lies the reason why this German folk-soul can so easily be misunderstood, why, as is only too natural, this misunderstanding of what the German folk-soul really is is now being manifested on every side. For the German folk-soul, unlike the British folk-soul, does not fulfil itself in the external body, does not surrender itself immediately to the mission of materialism, because such a task does not in the least correspond with its nature. But it embarks on the one hand upon the contemplation of the external world of matter, from which it does not seek to withdraw itself, and on the other, gives itself up to the contemplation of the Spirit. And this it does in order to draw upon those deep spiritual sources upon which Meister Eckhardt, Jacob Boehme, Goethe and Fichte drew, communing alone as in a sort of duologue with the spiritual world, and turned aside from outer things. Thus if individual souls of other nations have to turn aside from the folk-souls in which they are embedded in order to sink down into what we call Spirit, the German, through the very nature of his folk-soul is always capable of being raised to spiritual regions. The souls of the other peoples must learn to grow out of their folk-souls before they can commune with the spiritual world. But the folk-soul that speaks to the individual souls of the Central European people, itself sounds a spiritual note, is itself a witness to the Spirit. And because folk-souls express themselves in characteristic features, because they appear to us when they work through men and women, using these as the instruments they select in order to create something characteristic of them, this gives us an opportunity for studying the essence of what a folk-soul really is. We shall find our results confirmed in this study when, on pursuing the progress of the various folk-souls, we discover what are the characteristic symptoms in which their forces come to be expressed. And these characteristic features can certainly best be studied by considering the individual folk-souls at their highest points of achievement.

Now there can be no doubt that Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” is to be regarded as a characteristic expression of the British folk-soul, and one of its mightiest manifestations, and that in the case of the German folk-soul we must look upon Goethe’s “Faust” as the outcome of the most intimate communion of a German with the German folk-spirit. How characteristic is the difference between “Hamlet” and “Faust.” I need hardly enlarge upon the greatness of Shakespeare and of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” It will be granted by everyone, and there is no one who would rank Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” higher than I would. But in considering “Hamlet” as the outcome of the British folk-spirit, I would like to ask: What impression does “Hamlet” make on us?

As we have said, it is the mission of the British folk-spirit to introduce the Consciousness Soul, which is bond to the corporeal, into the outer development of historical events. My book, Rätsel der Philosophie (The Riddles of Philosophy) has recently been published as the second edition of my Welt -und Lebensanschauungen im Neunzehnten Jahrhundert (World and Life Conceptions in the Nineteenth Century), which appeared fourteen or fifteen years ago. It is now considerably enlarged and deals with the whole of Western philosophy. At the time of the first edition, in dealing with English philosophy, I tried to find an expression, a word that would be particularly well suited to render its character and the expression that occurred to me was that English Philosophy was the philosophy of an onlooker. An onlooker—and this can be shown particularly well in the work of John Stuart Mill—is one who sinks down into the body with his soul, and seeing the world from the body, lets the world go its own way. Compare with this the philosophy of Fichte. His was no “onlooker’s philosophy” but a “life philosophy,” one that does not “look on” at life but becomes one with it. This is the stupendous difference between the British and the German folk-souls. The British folk-soul tends in all its activities to turn man into an onlooker; it particularly encourages his powers of “looking on” by educating his Consciousness Soul. And in so far as he has cultivated the Consciousness Soul, man stands outside phenomena. He looks at them as it were from the body. Now Shakespeare’s greatness consists particularly in his capacity for standing at a distance and watching life objectively. His attitude to the phenomena of life and his descriptions of them show us that he paints things as an onlooker and describes what he experiences objectively from outside. An “onlooker’s world-concept” the outcome of the folk-soul . . . The truth is that when the individual human spirit, this spirit of the Consciousness Soul, armed with this peculiar characteristic which he gets from the folk-soul, when this individual spirit approaches the inner life of man, then he will see nothing but the play of externals—the inner side will always elude him. And this inability to reach the inner life must be particularly characteristic. In the pictures he draws of life’s external happenings, Shakespeare is a giant. But when it comes to perceiving the inner life through the external physiognomy then the “onlooker’s point of view” makes itself felt. And this onlooker’s point of view (expressed from the artistic greatness of the British folk-spirit) when it is faced with the inner world, shows itself to be that of the sceptic who doubts the very existence of the Spirit. We therefore intend no deprecation of Shakespeare when we say that he presents the Spirit as a ghost, a spook. Externally the spiritual appears as something ghostly. How does the spirit of Hamlet’s father appear? Not as a spirit but as a ghost. The man who believes in ghosts is in fact a spiritual materialist. He wants to perceive the spirit as a materialist would do, who asks that it should appear in some sort of rarefied matter. The spirit of Hamlet’s father appears, therefore, in ghost-like form. This is expressed in the confusion existing with regard to the way in which the spirit appears. As the materialistic mind can only get as far as a ghost, we see its whole teaching concerning the spiritual becoming confused. For example, whereas in the earlier part of the play everyone has seen the ghost, in the scene with his mother Hamlet is the only one to see it. At one moment it is an objective phenomena, at the next merely a subjective phantom. And now this great onlooker (for Hamlet is meant to be a character who looks on at the outer doings of the world), this great onlooker turns his gaze to the world within, and we get the famous speech in which he questions the spiritual world: To be or not to be? What follows after death? First awaking, then sleep, images, dreams; and then again doubt—“the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns.” All of it typical of the materialistic mind that tries to probe into the depths of the spiritual world and fails. This is why all those who, whether idealistically inclined or otherwise, cannot venture into the spirit, feel an inner kinship with Hamlet. Herman Grimm once said—and, for many, said truly—that when people probe too deeply into questions concerning their spiritual state, they stand as it were on the edge of an abyss and feel, like Hamlet, that they must throw themselves into it. Such, then, is the answer given us by one who, like Shakespeare, inspired by the folk-soul and yet transcending it, sets forth its spiritual essence. This answer shows us the bridge between Hamlet and the spiritual world to be broken and the gulf between filled only with uncertainty heaped upon uncertainty. Thus, even in this great artistic creation which of its kind remains unsurpassed and unsurpassable, the British folk-soul still reveals its own mission which is to contemplate the outer world and to be brought to a standstill before the abyss of the supernatural.

And now, to show by the description of a single figure how deep is the inwardness of the German folk-soul, so favourable to the life of the Ego and the unity of the soul, let us consider its most outstanding, its most profound manifestation in Goethe’s “Faust.” Does the soul stand here on the edge of an abyss into which it is impelled to cast itself? Far from it. Faust has no doubts about the spiritual world, his vision pierces beyond the material and historical facts that have gone to make up his life, and he stands face to face with the Spirit, he sees the Spirit before him, and he knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that he who probes deeply into the riddle of existence cannot be lost but will surely cross the abyss and be united with the Spirit.

And now let us turn to Hamlet again. He stands irresolute before the abyss with the question “To be or not to be” on his lips, asking of the spiritual world “to sleep, to dream?” And let us compare all this hesitation and uncertainty with the scene in the poem [First Part], where Faust stands face to face with the Spirit (Faust, Scene XIV):—

“Spirit sublime, thou gav’st me, gav’st me all
I ever asked thee. Not in vain didst thou
In flaming fire reveal thy countenance”
and further on
“Then to the cave secure thou leadest me,
Then show’st me mine own self, and in my breast
The deep, mysterious miracles unfold.”

This is union with the Spirit. In such union, in such vision the question whether we sleep, or dream, has no place. There is room only for Faust’s inspired advance into the spiritual world (as we find it described in the Second Part of the drama) and for the certainty which can be reached that the human spirit when it passes through the gates of death becomes united with the spiritual world. Here there is no longer any uncertain question about being or not being; there is the certainty that the soul is already in this world a citizen of the world of the Spirit, and that when it passes through the gates of death it stands face to face with the sublime Spirit who, if we but merge ourselves in it sufficiently during this life, will give us all we ask. But this Spirit is no ghostly apparition of the spirit world, for in the scene in the Witches’ kitchen spooks are treated with humour and with befitting irony. Mephistopheles, again, does not appear to Faust as a ghost, but is so conceived that one cannot imagine him otherwise than in human form. How meaningless it would be’ if, like Hamlet’s father, he were visible only to one person, or visible at one time and not at another. And the reason for this is that in “Faust” we are standing on solid ground.

Figures like Faust arise out of the folk-spirit, they are the fruit of the folk-soul. In Goethe’s Faust we have only a type and image of what has really taken place. For while Goethe was creating Faust, the whole of the folk-soul was active; it created itself in the book and created something that was alive, not only in Goethe, but in the spirit. Goethe’s Faust is but the copy of a creation of the German folk-soul, which moves in the spirit and which, as Goethe knew full well, is only at the beginning of its activity. Faust we know to be the symbol of an unconquerable force, of a reality that looks to the future. In Faust Goethe has planted a seed, and with equal truth it may be said that there is in the German folk-soul a power, a germinating force that will ever grow and ever spread in its activity. For Faust stands before us as one who must strive, and as one for whom all striving is only a beginning.

In order to bring out the characteristic feature of the German folk-spirit, we must mention another of its peculiarities. As I said, when we consider the French folk-spirit, we see that it is reminiscent of the culture of Ancient Greece. This reminiscence is visible in every department of French culture, but it works under the threshold of consciousness, it does not enter consciousness. The French folk-spirit shapes the individual in accordance with the influence exercised by this reminiscence, but this influence is not consciously felt. If the folk-spirit influences the individual soul in such a way as to bring out its ego-hood, then—since only in the Ego can Sentient, Rational and Consciousness Souls be united—the harmony of these united members of the soul will enter consciousness; whereas the essence of “reminiscence” is that it binds the folk-spirit to earlier cultural periods. Thus Greek culture enters into the German folk-spirit in quite a different manner from that in which it enters the French folk-soul. If Greek culture is introduced at a particularly characteristic point in the history of the German folk-soul and if in so doing it is to influence the isolated individual, then everything must happen consciously and not as it does in French culture, where the process is subliminal and only appears in the form of aesthetic debate. In the case of the German spirit, which is a mirror for the deeper events of history, the process must enter the consciousness of the man who allows himself to be specially guided by the folk-soul. Thus in the Second Part of “Faust” the union of Faust and Helena which takes place on the physical plane, in consciousness, quite clearly portrays the union with Greek culture. This is not merely entering into the Rational Soul, it is entering into the Ego. Faust stands, in all his completeness as a human being, face to face with Greek culture. In full consciousness of what he is doing, and in all solemnity he celebrates his union with an earlier period. I can naturally only give a few indications of what I mean. But light is thrown on the whole course of history when we consider the folk-souls in this way—dominating the destiny of man, beating, surging in endless interplay throughout the ages.

If now we set the German and the British folk-souls once again side by side, there is much we could point to showing that the Ego is what characterises the German folk-soul, while the Consciousness Soul is the special mark of the British folk-soul. Many of the peculiar features in the development of modern civilisation can be traced to this. It has been one of my tasks to show how Goethe gave birth (from the depths of his soul) to a Theory of Evolution in which he attempted from the depths of his Ego to reconstruct the whole sequence of organisms in their evolution from the simplest to the most perfected forms. This truly scientific theory, springing as it does from Goethe’s soul, is also the outcome of what one might call a “Communing between Goethe and the German folk-soul,” just as another theory is the outcome of a conversation with the British folk-soul. Goethe’s form of the Theory of Evolution, born as it is from the culture of the Ego, remains incomprehensible to many because Goethe delves so deeply into the nature of things in order to bring forth a Theory of Evolution out of the depths of the human soul. Such a theory could not spread rapidly. And then, in the nineteenth century, the British folk-soul seizes upon the Theory of Evolution; but while Goethe had started from the depths of the Ego, the British folk-soul starts from the Consciousness Soul and gives us the external “Struggle for existence” of the Darwinian theory. What Goethe established by means of inward development, Darwinism established outwardly. And as we live in the period of materialism, cultured humanity as a whole has neglected Goethe’s Theory of Evolution which comes from the depths of the Ego-culture, in favour of the form which Darwin has brought forth from the British folk-soul. Up to a certain point we still stand committed to this rejection of Ego-culture. I mean that theory which is scoffed at by all who believe themselves to be experts in this particular subject—I mean Goethe’s Theory of Colour which only those can understand who approach it from the standpoint of the human Ego-character. But humanity has rejected this theory of colour of Goethe’s (which comes from the depths of the Ego-culture) and has accepted Newton’s more materialistic colour theory inspired by the Consciousness Soul from out the British folk-spirit. But the time will come when men will learn to recognise that there is much in Goethe which they yet have to accept. And may I be allowed to say “in parenthesis”: Some of us may have succeeded in sending back to England our orders and marks of distinction; but true worth and dignity will not be achieved until, not only orders and distinctions, but also the materialistic form of the Theory of Evolution and the materialistic form of the Theory of Colour have been sent back to the British folk-soul whence they came.

The man whose thought is so inspired by the folk-soul that it is in the nature of a communing between the folk-soul and his own Ego, lives in such a way that in the most important moments of his life he is conscious of working for a content, of giving life to and realising a content in external life. Thus Goethe gave life to a content which had come to him in a moment of intuition when he founded his Theory of Evolution. But he who, ignoring the depths of his Ego, looks out onto the world from the Consciousness Soul, such an one will see nothing but the struggle for existence in the outward march of events. Every man sees his own inner nature in the external world. You can now all of you imagine what the events of to-day will mean for those who are inspired by the German folk-spirit, and what they will mean for those who are inspired by the British folk-spirit. The latter talks of the struggle for existence. Under the inspiration of the German folk-spirit, one sees in one’s opponent “the enemy,” whom one faces up to, man to man as in a duel. From the point of view of that folk-spirit which in science has inspired the Struggle for Existence, one sees the struggle in the field of battle in the following way: Everything becomes a struggle between “competing forces.”

In my first lecture, I tried in a few words to point to that which the Russian folk-soul stands for. There is no time to-day to enter more deeply into the subject, but a very peculiar characteristic of this folk-soul must be mentioned nevertheless. The curious thing about the Russian folk-soul what occurs to one at once, is that fundamentally it is less fitted than any other to the task it is engaged upon to-day—external struggle, external war. There is a very characteristic book by Mereschkowski, whom I have had occasion to mention before, called The March of the Mob. At the end of the book the author talks of the impression made upon him by the Hagia Sophia, the great basilica in Constantinople. The description he gives of this impression strikes the note which must come from the Russian folk-soul when it understands itself. And at the close of this passage the author tells how, surrendering himself completely to the spell of the great Mosque, he was moved to pray for his people:

“The Hagia Sophia, translucent and melancholy, flooded with the amber light of the ultimate mystery raised up my prostrate and affrighted soul. I gazed up at the dome, so like the vault of heaven, and thought: There it stands, created by the hand of man—man’s approach to the Triune Deity on earth. This approach has lasted, and what is more, will come again. How should those who love the Son not come to the Father who is the world? How should those not come to the Son who love the world, which the Father also loved since He gave His Son for it? For they are giving up their lives for Him and for their friends. They have the Son because they have love. Only His name they know not. And I was impelled to pray for them all, to pray in this heathen shrine that shall yet be the one and only temple of the future, that there be granted to my people the true power of victory, the conscious faith in the God who is Three in One.”

If we can regard the German folk-spirit, expressed in its representative “Faust” as one that is in the midst of the process of becoming, then we must look upon the Russian folk-soul as one that is still waiting for what is to happen. Its prevailing attitude is that of looking into the future, of not having found what it sought in the present. But when the Russian folk-soul becomes conscious of what lives in the depths of its nature, waiting to be brought out to the light, then it will realise that its mission lies in inner development, that this mission can fundamentally best be fulfilled by making its conquests within, by bringing forth that which lies hidden in its own depths and will some day be of great value to the cultural life of humanity. We cannot simply dismiss the Russian folk-soul as “barbaric”; we must think of it as one that will reach its full stature later on but has not yet passed beyond the age of childhood. I know how incomplete is this characterisation of the Russian folk-soul, but lack of time prevents me from describing it with more than a few words. This much, however, I will say. When the Russian folk-soul expresses itself as to-day, when it fails to express that attitude of expectation (which Mereschkowski represents as the spirit of prayer lying deep within the folk-soul) then it can be nothing but a wrecker of spiritual culture and of human culture in general. In turning outwards, the Russian folk-soul seems to be doing the opposite of what it really befits it to do.

This is why we feel, when we look towards the West, that however terrible the things that are at present going on there, they are the inevitable outcome of the impulses existing in the Western folk-souls. With the Russian folk-soul, on the contrary, we feel that it is quite unsuitable for this people to turn against those of the West, whom it ought, if it understood itself aright, to accept as its teachers. It is only because, of recent years, the question at issue has been so little understood that the importance of much that came from this quarter has been overestimated.

We could carry still further our study of the characteristics of folk-souls. Thus the human soul that realises itself in the Ego stands in the most intimate relation to the three members of the soul, the Sentient, the Rational or Mind, and the Consciousness Souls. Sometimes the individual soul rebels against the influences of the three members, sometimes they rebel against the individual soul. Just as the single individual soul shows the relationship of the three soul divisions to the human Ego, so can we see to-day the expressions and relationships of the several European souls to the soul of Europe as a whole. For external events are only a projection of the war waged by the members of the soul against the Ego. The Ego penetrates into the separate members, it establishes a relation with them; and here again we could discover in the outer events a confirmation of the findings of Spiritual Science reached by inner investigation.

The Ego is attracted to the Sentient Soul because it longs to be fertilised and quickened by the experiences of the Sentient Soul. Thus we see the German folk-soul plunging from the middle of Europe into the Italian folk-soul. We can trace this process right through history. If we go back to the time of Dürer and of other artists we see how they steeped themselves in the Italian folk-soul. Later we note that Goethe did not find happiness until he had satisfied his longing for Italy. This process consists on the one hand in the interplay between the Ego and the Sentient Soul, and on the other in that between the German folk-soul and the Italian folk-spirit. If we follow the course of history further we shall see how the individual Ego has to come to an understanding with the Rational and Consciousness Souls. Consider how often, right up till modern times, the German folk-soul has adjusted itself to the French, how Leibnitz, the most German of philosophers, wrote his works in French, and how Frederick the Great, the founder of Prussia’s greatness, lived almost exclusively in an atmosphere of French culture. This shows how strong is the inclination of the German spirit to be international, to fulfil itself in all the different nationalities. And this being its fundamental characteristic, to fulfil itself everywhere, we find the German folk-spirit also coming to an understanding with the British folk-soul, since nowadays it accepts, not Goethe’s Theory of Evolution and Theory of Colour, but Darwin’s and Newton’s. This shows how deep a bond there exists between the German folk-spirit and the British. And if to-day British voices are roused in anger against everything German, the German folk-soul cannot from the depths of its being return the hate which the British folk-spirit has shown towards it. The British folk-soul hates from sheer materialism. But the German folk-soul cannot maintain this position. It will have to come to an understanding with materialism. It is doing so now with force of arms in the fight that has been forced upon it, and in the future it will do so by liberating the spiritual within an epoch of materialism. Thus do we look through the external events of the moment into what is being revealed at the centre of Europe.

It is not, I think, a useless task to probe in this way into the fundamental nature of the folk-souls. For it seems to me that if the folk-souls are so illumined, the light may also be cast upon the fateful happenings of to-day and make their meaning clear. If we go deeply into the nature of these folk-souls then we shall feel the present-day events to be the inevitable outcome of their relations to each other. And this surely is the right way of coming to an understanding. And if it is true—as surely it is—that the events that are taking place east and west of us are of so mighty a nature that they must be the heralds of a new epoch, then from these events will develop a new phase in the history of the human spirit. For only a new phase of the human spirit can be fought for with such mighty sacrifices. And if this is so, then it is also true that much that up till now has been won only with petty sacrifices will in the future have to be achieved at a greater price. For the sacrifices made by Spiritual Science which I mentioned yesterday in connection with the development of the human soul are really far greater than all the sacrifices that are expended on external observations and experiments. Let us see to it that the great sacrifices made in the cause of another science be linked up to all the heroism and to all the suffering we see around us. I told you in my lecture yesterday how the forces of the unfinished lives now being sacrificed will unite with beings of the spiritual world and pours down their influence into the world of history here below. This picture, which corresponds nevertheless to a reality, I shall try to complete. Yes. We are entering upon a time when many will have to pay for the advent and development of a new world-phase of the human spirit with their blood and their lives, in suffering and in dangers. But those who have been called upon to do this will not know their sacrifice to have really been worth while till the future, when they will look down upon a humanity which will know how to live more worthily of the new era that has set in. If it is the folk-spirit that now demands the blood of our generation, it will be the folk-spirit that in the new era thus brought in will demand a new form of life. The folk-spirit will call upon those—and it will be for the humanity of the future to hear this call—who will liberate from their bodies the youthful forces of their souls for the quickening of the new humanity. Those, however, who preserve their lives and their health will feel that the child of humanity’s spiritual life, born of suffering and death, will need those who can tend it and who can receive the inspiration of the folk-soul aright. And no one will understand the German folk-soul who does not understand the German language, and this language shall not be the language of the external material life, but the language of the spirit. May the new spirit [Zeitenwesen], then, which is being born to-day of blood, of wounds and of death, find a humanity which, through the powerful unfolding of human spiritual power, will show itself worthy to be the guardian of the new age so hardly fought for, so hardly won.

• 1. “Goethe’s Mentality in our Fateful Days, and German Culture,” delivered on 29th October, in the “Architektenhaus” in Berlin.
• 2. The “Rational Soul” is also Called “Intellectual or Mind Soul.”
• 3. The “Consciousness Soul” is also called “Spirit Soul.”

The Temptation is presented in the Gospel of St. Matthew as an account of a particular form of Initiation. The story is followed by indications of what Christ Jesus was to mean, firstly to His disciples. Not only was He to be the expounder of the ancient teachings in an entirely new form but a living force—if this word may be used—a health-giving force for men. This is demonstrated in the healings.

In the lecture yesterday we went on to consider a subject which, if it is to be understood, calls for a certain measure of goodwill arising from spiritual-scientific knowledge acquired through the years. We spoke of the unique, living quality of teaching imparted through the transmission of forces from Christ Jesus into the souls of His disciples. An attempt was made to express a great mystery in words of human language and to indicate the nature of the teaching given by Christ Jesus to His disciples. We may think of Christ Jesus Himself as a focal point, a focal centre, as it were, for forces that were to stream from the Macrocosm into the conditions of life on the Earth and into the souls of the disciples. Such forces could be marshalled only by powers that were concentrated in Christ Himself. Through Him, forces which otherwise stream into man unconsciously during sleep, streamed to the disciples as illuminating, life-giving forces of the Cosmos itself. To characterize these forces in any detail is of course only possible by studying the difference in cosmic constellations, and it is this mystery, as presented in the Gospel of St. Matthew, to which we shall give attention to-day. In the first place, however, it must be realised that the disciples had inevitably become wiser in regard to conditions on Earth because thc powers and forces of Christ Jesus had poured upon them. In diverse ways and degrees they had become more mature, had acquired more living wisdom.

A very significant phenomenon in the development of one of the disciples is presented to us, but to be understood it must be contemplated in a vast setting. And here the fact must be kept firmly in mind that the individual man himself progresses together with evolving humanity. In the post-Atlantean era we have passed through incarnation after incarnation in the ancient Indian, the ancient Persian, the Egypto-Chaldean and the Greco-Latin civilization-epochs, in order to receive some-thing from the environment and the prevailing conditions of the times. That is how progress is made.

What does development through the epochs of human evolution really mean? From elementary Anthroposophy we know of the different members of man's being: physical body, etheric body, astral body, sentient soul, intellectual or mind-soul, spiritual or consciousness-soul. The higher members still to be developed are Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, Spirit-Man. Something quite definite is achieved for each of these members in thc several epochs of post-Atlantean civilization. Thus in the first epoch, forces enhancing the capacities of the etheric body were instilled into man. Such forces had been implanted in his physical body during the last periods of the Atlantean era and the first gifts to be bestowed in the post-Atlantean era were those imparted to the etheric body during the epoch of ancient Indian culture. During the epoch of ancient Persia, forces were implanted in man's astral body, or sentient body; during the Egypto-Chaldean and Greco-Latin epochs in the sentient soul and intellectual or mind-soul respectively; and we are living now in the age when the forces connected with this line of progress are gradually to be instilled into the spiritual or consciousness-soul. No very great advance has yet been made in this respect. In the future sixth post-Atlantean epoch the forces of the Spirit-Self will be implanted in human nature, and in the seventh epoch those of the Life-Spirit. And then we glimpse a far, far distant future, when Spirit-Man, or Atma, is to be inculcated into normal human nature.

We will now think of this process of development in relation to the individual human being. Those who knew the truth of these things from the Mysteries always pictured man as we must picture him now and as the disciples too had to learn to picture him through the enlightenment that had come to them from Christ Jesus. In a human being—either as he is to-day or also as he was at the time of Christ Jesus—there are rudiments or seeds, just as there are in a plant; they are already present when the plant has developed only leaves, and not yet flower and fruit. Looking at such a plant we know that although it now has leaves only, there already lie within it the germinal beginnings of flower and fruit, and that these will develop if growth proceeds in the normal and regular way. As surely as flower and fruit will grow out of the plant although at first it has green leaves only, as surely will the consciousness-soul arise in the human being—who in the days of Christ Jesus had developed only the sentient soul and the intellectual or mind-soul. The consciousness-soul then prepares to receive the Spirit-Self, in order that the highest triad may come as a new divine-spiritual gift to man. Therefore we can say: Through the contents and qualities of his soul, man's development is like that of a plant which, to begin with, has green leaves only but subsequently both flower and fruit. Out of sentient soul, mind-soul and spiritual or consciousness-soul, man unfolds something like a flower of his being, holding it in readiness to receive a divine power that comes down to him from above—this power being the Spirit-Self which enables him to reach further stages along the path leading to the heights of evolution.

In men who were living at the time of Christ Jesus the intellectual or mind-soul had developed in the perfectly normal way as their highest soul-principle; but although the intellectual or mind-soul was not able to receive into itself the Spirit-Self, there was to develop, as the child of the intellectual soul, the spiritual or consciousness-soul into which the Spirit-Self could descend.

What was the expression used in the Mysteries when referring to this flower that was to unfold from man's own nature? How was this growth defined in the environment of Christ Jesus when it was a matter of indicating that the disciples were to make a true advance in their development? Translated into our language, the expression used was ‘Son of Man’. The Greek has by no means the restricted meaning of our ‘son’ as ‘son of a father’ but signifies the successor of a living being, an entity that evolves from a living being like the blossom or flower of a plant on which hitherto there have been leaves only. Hence in the era before normally developed men had unfolded the consciousness-soul as the flower of their nature they had nothing of the ‘Son of Man’ in them. But there must always be some who are in advance of their generation, who already bear within them in an earlier epoch the knowledge and potentialities of a later one. In the fourth epoch—when normally only the intellectual or mind-soul had developed—there would always have been some among the leaders of men who, although their outward appearance was similar to that of others, had already unfolded the seed of the spiritual or consciousness-soul into which the Spirit-Self sends its radiance.—And there were indeed such ‘Sons of Men’. Hence it behooved the disciples of Christ Jesus to recognize and learn to understand the nature of these leaders.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

To test how far this was understood by His intimate disciples, Christ Jesus asked them: Tell me, of which human beings it can be said that they are ‘Sons of Men’ in this generation?—That is approximately how the question would have to be formulated in accordance with the original Aramaic text of St. Matthew's Gospel. (I have already said that although the Greek version, if it is thoroughly understood, is certainly better than that produced by any modern scholarship, a great deal was inevitably obscured in the process of translation from the Aramaic original.) We must picture Christ Jesus standing before His disciples and asking them: Which individuals of the previous generations in the Greco-Latin epoch are held to have been ‘Sons of Men’? The disciples then spoke of Elias, John the Baptist, Jeremias, and other prophets. Through the power transmitted to them by Christ the disciples knew that those leaders of men had been the recipients of forces enabling them to become bearers of the ‘Son of Man’. On the same occasion, the disciple who is usually called Peter, gave still another answer.

To understand this answer we must keep firmly in mind what has been said in these lectures about the mission of Christ Jesus as indicated in the Gospel of St. Matthew, namely that through the Christ Impulse it was possible for men to develop Ego-consciousness in the fullest sense, to bring to blossom what is implicit in the am'. In other words : even in the actual process of Initiation, men were in future to retain all along the paths leading into the higher worlds the full Ego-consciousness normally possessed only on the physical plane. This was made possible through Christ's existence on the Earth. We can therefore say: Christ Jesus is the representative, the embodiment, of the power which imparts to mankind full consciousness of the ‘I am.’

I have already called attention to the fact that the interpretations of the Gospels put forward by rationalists, let alone by declared sceptics, do not usually emphasize the points of real significance. It is insisted that certain phrases in the Gospels and other books of the Bible were in existence previously, for example the Beatitudes. But the shade of meaning that was not there previously—and this is the gist of the whole matter—is that what could not then be attained by the human being in full Ego-consciousness, could now be attained by him through the Christ Impulse! This is of the very greatest significance. I have spoken of each Beatitude and have shown that the words of the first should be: ‘Blessed are they who are beggars for the spirit’—because a man is poor in spirit who on account of the advancing evolution of human consciousness can no longer look into the spiritual world with the old clairvoyance. But to such men Christ gives this consolation and enlightenment: Although they can no longer see into the spiritual world with the organs of the old clairvoyance, vision of the world will now be possible through their own Ego, for through themselves they will find the Kingdoms of Heaven! So too the second Beatitude: ‘Blessed are they that mourn.’ They will no longer be dependent upon the faculty of the old clairvoyance for reaching the spiritual world, for they will now achieve this by developing their own Ego. But in order that this may come to pass the Ego must take into itself more and more of the power that was anchored once on Earth in a unique Being—in Christ.

Men of the modern age ought really to give a little thought to the following.—It is not for nothing that Greek words of vital importance occur in every Beatitude: Thus the first sentence, ‘Blessed are they who are beggars for the spirit’, should be followed by the words: ‘In themselves’—or ‘through themselves’—‘they will find the Kingdoms of Heaven.’ The words, ‘In themselves’ are always accentuated, in the second sentence, in the third, and so on.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Forgive me if by a trivial analogy I now call attention to something of importance at the present time. People will have to resolve not to apply the word ‘auton’—as in our automobile—to machines only or to take it in an entirely external sense. They will have to understand in a spiritual sense too the quality or activity implied by ‘self-engendered activity’. Our contemporaries would do well to take this admonition to heart. They welcome ‘self-engendered activity’ in machines, but they should also learn what this activity implies in regard to inner experience which in all the Mysteries was beyond the reach of Ego-consciousness until the time of the Christ Event. Through self-engendered activity, man himself is now able by degrees to become a creator. And this is what the men of to-day will learn to under-stand if they fill themselves with the Christ Impulse.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Keeping this in mind we shall realise that another question put by Christ Jesus to the disciples was of very special importance. He had first asked: Who among the leaders of a former generation could be called a ‘Son of Man’?—and the disciples had spoken of certain individuals. He then put a further question, wishing to bring them gradually to the point of understanding His own nature, of understanding what He represented in regard to Egohood. This is implicit in the other question: ‘But whom say ye that I am?’ (Matt. XVI, 15). (Special importance must in every instance be attached to the words ‘I am’ in the Gospel of St. Matthew.) The answer given by Peter showed that he now recognized Christ not only as a ‘Son of Man’ but as the ‘Son of the living God’—and this translation can well be retained.

What is the difference between ‘Son of the living God’ and ‘Son of Man’? To understand this, certain facts already known to us must be elaborated.

As man evolves, the spiritual or consciousness-soul develops in him; in the consciousness-soul the Spirit-Self can become manifest. But when the consciousness-soul has developed in a man, Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man must as it were come towards him, in order that this opening flower of his being may receive the higher triad. This ascent of man can also be likened to the development and growth of a plant.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Man's being comes to flower in the spiritual or consciousness-soul and Spirit-Self or Manas, Life-Spirit or Budhi, and Spirit-Man or Atma, stream towards him. This may be likened to a process of spiritual fertilization from above. Whereas man grows upwards from below with the other members of his being, unfolding the flower that is the ‘Son of Man’, if he is to progress even further and acquire full Ego-consciousness there must come to him from above the gift of Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man. And who is the representative of this gift from above, pointing to what man's nature will be in a far, far distant future? The first gift received is the Spirit-Self. He who receives the Spirit-Self coming from above—of whom is he the representative? He is the representative, the Son, of the God who lives, the Son of the Life-Spirit, the Son of the living God!

And now Christ Jesus asks: What is it that must come to men through my impulse?—It is the life-giving, Spirit-principle from above! Thus a distinction must be made between the Son of Man who has grown upwards from below the Son of God, the Son of the living God, who comes down from above. But the difficulty of this question for the disciples will be apparent to you when you realise that they were the very first to receive what the simplest of men since the time of Christ Jesus have received through the Gospels. It was only the living forces of Christ Jesus that enabled the disciples to assimilate all this teaching. The faculties they had already developed were not capable of answering the question: Of whom am I myself the representative? The Gospel then records that one of the disciples, Peter by name, gave the answer: ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God!’ At the moment of its utterance, this was an answer that did not issue from Peter's normal spiritual faculties.

Let us try to picture the scene vividly.—As He gazed at Peter, Christ Jesus realised the great significance of the fact that there should have come from this mouth an answer pointing to an immeasurably distant future. And then, perceiving the actual range of Peter's consciousness and of powers sufficiently developed to enable him to give such an answer through his intellect or through faculties acquired at stages leading to Initiation, Christ Jesus was bound to affirm: This answer does not spring from Peter's conscious knowledge; it is those deeper powers, only gradually transformed by man into conscious powers, that arc speaking here.

Through transforming the forces of our astral, etheric and physical bodies we rise to Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man. This is an elementary teaching of Spiritual Science. The forces We shall eventually unfold in the astral body as Spirit-Self are already within the astral body, but they are there by the grace of divine-spiritual Powers; their development is not due to our own efforts and activity. So too there is divine Life-Spirit within our etheric body. Hence Christ says to Peter: It is not what is in your consciousness at this moment that spoke from your mouth, but something you will develop only in the future, something that is indeed within you but of which as yet you know nothing. What is part of your flesh and blood is not yet capable of uttering the words: ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ Divine-spiritual powers lying deeply below the threshold of consciousness—indeed the very deepest powers in human nature—were speaking out of you at that moment.—It was the mysterious higher Powers in Peter—called by Christ the ‘Father in Heaven’—the Powers out of which Peter had indeed been born but of which he was not yet conscious, that spoke out of him. Hence the saying: ‘This has been revealed to you by the Father in Heaven, not by what you are at present as a man of flesh and blood.’

In these circumstances Christ was bound to say to Himself: ‘In Peter I have a disciple whose whole constitution is such that the Father-power within him has not yet been touched by forces already engendered by consciousness, by the operations of spiritual activity; this subconscious power is so strong in Peter that it can be his sure foundation when he surrenders himself to it. This is the important quality in him. It is also present in every human being, but will be raised into the conscious state only in the future. If what I have to impart to mankind, if that for which I am the impulse, is to unfold and lay hold of men, it must be founded upon the utterance made through the mouth of Peter: ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God!’ Upon this rock in human nature, unharmed as yet by the surging waves of consciousness, upon the Father-power voicing itself in those words, I will build what must spring with ever-increasing strength from my impulse.’—

When this foundation is established, the humanity embodying the Christ Impulse will arise.—This is implicit in the words: ‘Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build that which can create a community of men faithful to the Christ Impulse!’

Glib discussions and debates about these words in St. Matthew's Gospel take place to-day, for nearly all over the world they are the subject of controversy. They must indeed not be taken lightly. They can be understood only when their meaning is drawn from the depths of the wisdom that is the wisdom of the Mysteries.

And now something else is indicated, namely that Christ Jesus does indeed build upon the deeper, subconscious power in Peter. Immediately afterwards He begins to speak of what is about to befall, and of the Mystery of Golgotha. The moment has already passed when the deeper nature in Peter was speaking; he now gives utterance to what has already become conscious in him. Now he cannot understand what Christ means, cannot believe that suffering and death are to ensue. And when the Peter who has developed his own conscious faculties is speaking, Christ must reprove him, saying: This is not uttered by a Divinity within you but by faculties you have developed in yourself as a human being; what these faculties have here produced is worthless, for its source is delusion; it comes from Ahriman, from Satan!—This is implied in the words: ‘Get thee behind me, Satan. Thou art an offence unto me; for thou savourest not the things that be of God but those that be of men.’ (Matt. XVI, 23). Christ uses the word ‘Satan’ for Ahriman, whereas elsewhere in the Bible the word ‘Devil’ applies to everything of a Luciferic nature. Christ uses the right word for the delusion to which Peter succumbs.

Such is the truth. But what does modern Bible exegesis make of these episodes? It has realised that Christ Jesus cannot have said to Peter at one minute: ‘You alone have recognized that a God is standing before you!’ and have called him ‘Satan’ the next. So some critics conclude that the word ‘Satan’ must have been interpolated at a later time and is therefore a falsification.—The fact of the matter is that the meaning attributed to this by modern philological research makes current opinion on the subject quite worthless. Only on the basis of a fundamental understanding of the Bible is it possible for any authentic statement to be made about the origins of the texts in question.

But between the two sayings I have quoted there is another, intelligible only in the light of an ancient, yet ever, new Mystery-teaching: that man as he is on Earth—not only the individual but every community of men—is a mirror-image of processes in the Macrocosm. Mention was made of this when we were speaking of the genealogy of Jesus of Nazareth. It was explained that the meaning of the words spoken to Abraham was: ‘Thy descendants shall be an image of the order of the stars in heaven.’ The order of the twelve constellations and of the movement of the planets through the Zodiac was to be repeated in the twelve tribes and in the history of the Hebrew people through three times fourteen generations. Thus in the sequence of the generations and the special heredity resulting from the blood-ties in the twelve tribes, there was to be an image of macrocosmic conditions. Such was the declaration made to Abraham.

At the moment when Peter, whose deeper nature had been able to understand that the Christ Impulse signified the down-flow of spiritual power through the Son of the living God—at that moment Christ knows that He can speak to those around Him of the beginning of something new arising on the Earth. Whereas it had been declared to Abraham that the image of cosmic conditions was to be formed by blood-kinship, this image was now to be replaced by one formed by relationships of an ethical, moral and spiritual character, giving expression to what man can attain through his Ego. When men understand, as the deeper nature in Peter understood, what the Christ truly is, they will not establish communities and institutions based entirely on the blood-tie but communities where the bond of love is woven from soul to soul. Just as in the blood of the Hebrew people and in the threads running through the generations, that which was ordained to be bound together in the human race was bound together and that which was ordained to be loosed was loosed according to the pattern of the Macrocosm, so there was now to arise through the conscious Ego, in the form of ethical, moral and spiritual relationships, the force that either looses the ties between human beings or binds them together in love. Human institutions were now to be created or harmonized by the conscious Ego. This is the meaning of the words spoken by Christ Jesus in continuation of the answer He had given to Peter: ‘Whatever you bind on Earth—whatever thc deeper nature in you binds—that shall be bound in Heaven, and whatever the same deeper nature in you looses on the Earth below, shall also be loosed in Heaven’ (see Matt. XVI, 19).

In ancient times the all-important factor in associations among human beings was blood-relationship. But men must now grow to the stage where the ties of real significance are of a spiritual, moral and ethical character. From this it follows that a community must mean something for an individual who has been a contributory factor in the founding of it. In the sense of Anthroposophy, we can say: the karma of the individual must be merged with the karma of communities. This will be known to you from what has been said in recent years. The idea of karma is not repudiated when I give something to one who is needy, nor when the karma. of an individual is shouldered for him by the community. The community can help to bear the fate of the individual. In other words, the following may happen in the moral sphere. A single member of a community commits a wrong. This will quite certainly be inscribed in his personal karma and be worked out in the great setting of world-existence. But someone else may come forward and say: ‘I will help you to work out this karma!’—The karma must be fulfilled, but the other person can help; whole communities can help the one who has committed a wrong. The karma of an individual may be so interwoven with the community that the community, regarding him as a member, deliberately shoulders§ the burden of his destiny, feeling for him and resolving that his lot shall be ameliorated. The attitude of the community may be: You, as an individual, have done wrong, but we will enter the lists for you; we take upon ourselves whatever will bring about the adjustment of your karma!—If ‘church’ is substituted for ‘community’, this means that the church assumes the obligation to take upon itself the sins of the individual, to share the burden of his karma. It is not a matter of what is to-day called ‘forgiveness of sins’, but of a real bond, an acceptance of the burden of sins. And the essential point is that the community consciously accepts this burden.

If the ‘binding’ and ‘loosing’ are understood in thiS sense, every case of forgiveness of Sins would entail an obligation on the part of the community. Thus a web is spun by the threads of individual karma being woven into the karma of the whole community. And this web, through what Christ brought down from the heights of the Spirit, is to be an image of the order prevailing in Heaven; that is to say, the karma of the individual is not to be bound with the collective karma in any fortuitous way but so that the community as an organism shall become an image of the order prevailing in Heaven.

This scene of Peter's avowal now begins to reveal an infinitely profound meaning to those who have a dawning understanding of it. It denotes the founding of thc humanity of the future—a humanity based upon the Ego-nature in man. What takes place in this intimate conversation between Christ and those who were closest to Him is that Christ transmits the power He Himself has brought from the Macrocosm to what the disciples are to establish. And from this point onwards the Gospel of St. Matthew recounts how the disciples are led upwards, step by step, to the stage where the powers of the Sun and of the Cosmos gathered together in the Christ Being can flow into them. We know that one form of Initiation is an expansion into the Macrocosm. And because Christ Himself is the impulse in this Initiation, He leads His disciples out into the Cosmos. While an individual aspirant is undergoing the process of this Initiation he passes consciously into the Macrocosm, gathering knowledge of it by degrees. Christ descends as it were from the Macrocosm, makes manifest its instreaming forces and conveys them to thc disciples.

In one part of the lecture yesterday I indicated how this takes place. Let us picture the scene as graphically as possible. While a man is asleep his physical and etheric bodies lie in the bed while his astral body and Ego pass out into the Cosmos and the forces of the Cosmos pour into these members of his being. If Christ were now to approach, He would be the One who consciously draws these forces to the sleeping man and illumines him. This is exactly what happens in a scene described in the Gospel. The disciples are in a ship in the fourth watch of the night. Then they see that the figure they had at first taken to be a spirit, is Christ, who enables the forces and power of thc Macrocosm to flow into them. How He leads the disciples to the stage where they can receive the forces of the Macrocosm is clearly portrayed.

The next scenes in St. Matthew's Gospel show how Christ leads the disciples step by step along the path taken by every would-be Initiate. It is as if Christ Himself is treading this path, leading His disciples by the hand to Initiation.—I will now say something that will enable you to realise how the disciples are led stage by stage into the Macrocosm.

Many things previously beyond man's ken become known to him through visions of the spiritual world, through clairvoyant faculties. Thus, for example, he is able to recognize the actual processes operating in the growth of plants. A materialist will say of a plant: Here I have a flower—let us say it is a fruit-bearing plant—and a seed will form in it. The seed can be extracted and laid in the soil; the grain eventually dissolves and a new plant, again bearing seed, appears. And so the process continues. Something passes over from the dissolving grain of seed into the new plant.—A materialist cannot possibly think otherwise than that something material, however minute, passes over. But it is not so. The truth is that in respect of its material, its substance, the old plant is entirely destroyed. A jump (Sprung) takes place and the new plant is an entirely new formation—in respect of material substance an absolutely new formation.

Facts of the very greatest importance are recognized and understood when this remarkable law is grasped. Jumps do actually occur in material conditions. This was expressed in the Mysteries in a very definite way. It was said: In passing into the Cosmos the aspirant for Initiation must at a certain stage acquire knowledge of the forces that bring about these ‘jumps’. Now certain processes in the Cosmos can be understood if the constellations are used as means of indication. The constellations are then like letters of a script. When we pass into the Cosmos in a particular direction we come to know the jumps that occur from forefather to successor—whether it be in the plant, animal or human kingdoms, or even in the realm of planetary existence. At the transitions of Saturn-evolution to Sun-evolution, of Sun-evolution to Moon-evolution, of Moon-evolution to Earth-evolution, everything material passed away. The spiritual remained and it was the spiritual that brought about the jumps. In small things and in great it is the same.

Two symbols have been used for this principle, one ancient and of a more pictorial, imaginative character, and another rather newer. You can find the newer symbol in calendars. As evolution advances, the past curls inwards like a vortex and the new phase emerges as a second vortex, unfolding from within outwards and leading on further. But the new phase is not actually joined to the old; between the end of the old phase and the beginning of the new there is a little ‘jump’ or ‘gap’ and only then does the process of evolution continue.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

In the above figure we have two intertwining vortices and between them a little gap. This is the zodiacal sign of Cancer, symbolizing the process of growing out into the Macrocosm and the birth of a new shoot in some phase of evolution.

This principle was also represented by another symbol. Strange as it may seem to you, the symbol was an ass and its foal, the forefather and his offspring. This was meant to represent the actual transition from one condition to the other. Ancient delineations of the constellation of Cancer often consist of the figure of an ass and its foal. To know this is by no means without importance. It helps us to understand that another significant transition takes place when a man is rising to the stage leading into the spiritual world but must then be prepared for entirely new revelations. The stellar symbol correctly indicates this by portraying how when the physical sun passes through the constellation of Cancer and reaches the zenith, it descends again. And when the aspirant for Initiation first makes the ascent into the spiritual world and has acquired knowledge of its forces, he brings them down again in order to turn them to the service of humanity.

The Gospel of St. Matthew and the other Gospels too, tell how Christ Jesus presents this truth to the disciples. The way in which the story is told indicates that He is not using words alone but is presenting to them the Imagination, the living picture, of what He Himself is accomplishing as He approaches the height to which evolving humanity must in time ascend. He uses the image of the ass and its foal; that is to say, He guides the disciples towards an understanding of what corresponds in the spiritual life to the constellation of Cancer. This is a picture of something that has come to pass in the living, spiritual relationship between Christ and His disciples. So great is its majesty and its splendour that it cannot be expressed in the words of any human language but only through Christ Himself initiating the disciples into the conditions prevailing in the spiritual world and creating in physical conditions images of the Macrocosm He leads them to the point where the powers of one who is initiated become, in turn, of service to mankind. He is standing at the height that can only be indicated by the image of the Sun at the zenith of the sign of Cancer! No wonder that this chapter (XXI) of the Gospel of St. Matthew points to the supreme height now reached in Christ's earthly life, triumphantly proclaimed by the words: ‘Hosanna in the highest!’ Everything is ordained to the end that through what has here come to pass the disciples may grow to the stage where through the powers working in them there may unfold in men what Christ Jesus has brought into the evolution of humanity.

The story of the feast of the Passover is nothing else than an account of the living influx of the power that was to stream into the disciples, first as teaching and then into humanity as if by magic, as an outcome of the Mystery of Golgotha. It is in this light that the continuation of the story, in the Gospel of St. Matthew is to be understood. Then we shall also realise that the writer of the Gospel was perpetually conscious of the need to point to the contrast between the living teaching brought from cosmic heights and imparted to the disciples, and the teaching suitable for those who were not yet ready to receive the forces of Christ Jesus Himself. Hence the utterances in the conversations with the Scribes and Pharisees which we shall be studying tomorrow. To-day, however, we will remind ourselves that after Christ Jesus has guided His disciples as far as possible along the path leading to the goal of all aspirants for Initiation, He holds out thc prospect that if they tread this path they themselves will pass into the spiritual world, into the Macrocosm. He tells them that they have within them the qualities necessary for subsequent Initiation, that Initiation is in store for them and that they will find the way into that world where they will recognize Christ more and more clearly as the Being who fills all spiritual space and was imaged in Jesus of Nazareth. Christ says to His disciples that they are approaching this Initiation, that they will become Initiates of humanity. He reminds them too that individual Initiation can be attained only if by dint of patience and endurance the inner nature is allowed to mature.

What is it that must grow in man's inner nature as its forces increase in strength and he develops a higher form of clairvoyance? His qualities must mature to the stage where he can receive into himself the forces of Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man. But when the power that makes him an Initiate, a participant in the Kingdoms of Heaven, will stream into him from above, depends upon the moment when he can become fully mature; it depends upon the karma of the individual. Who knows when the moment has come? It is known only to the very highest initiates, not to those at lower stages of Initiation. For any individuality who is ready to reach the spiritual world, the hour comes when he does so. Assuredly the hour comes, but in such a way that he is not aware of it—it comes like a thief in the night !

How does a man reach the spiritual world? In the ancient Mysteries—and in a certain respect it is so in the new—there were three stages of Initiation into the Macrocosm. When the first stage had been attained by the aspirant, the powers of the Spirit-Self became active in him and now he was not only a new man but had become one whose nature was said to be that of an ‘Angel—that is to say, a Being of the Hierarchy immediately above man. In the Mysteries of ancient Persia, a man possessing the powers of the Spirit-Self was called a ‘Persian’ because he was no longer a separate individual but belonged to the Angel of the Persian people. At the next stage of Initiation the Life-Spirit awakens. A man who had reached this stage was called a ‘Sun Hero’ in the Persian Mysteries, because he had developed to thc stage where he could receive the spiritual forces of the Sun streaming towards the Earth. But such a man was also called a ‘Son of the Father’. And one with whom Atma, or Spirit-Man, had made contact was called ‘Father’ in the ancient Mysteries. The three stages of Initiation were: Angel, Son or Sun Hero, Father.

Only the very highest Initiates, they and they alone are able to judge when the moment of Initiation can be reached. Hence Christ speaks to the following effect.—Initiation will be attained if you go forward on the paths along which I have led you. You will rise into the Kingdoms of Heaven, but the hour is known neither to the Angels in whom the Spirit-Self is working, neither to the Son in whom the Life-Spirit has awakened, but only to the very highest Initiates, those in whom the Father-principle is active.

Here again the words of St. Matthew's Gospel (XXIV, 36) are in absolute conformity with the tradition originating in the Mysteries. And we shall find that the proclamation of the Kingdom of Heaven is nothing else than the prediction to the disciples that they will experience initiation. Christ Jesus indicates this very clearly in the text of the Gospel of St. Matthew. If the relevant passage is correctly interpreted it is quite evident that Christ is referring to certain teachings in circulation at that time on the subject of reaching the Kingdoms of Heaven. Men had taken this in the material sense, believing that it applied to the whole Earth, whereas they ought to have known that the Kingdoms of Heaven are reached by a few individuals only, through their Initiation. In other words, the opinion was held by some that the Earth would be transformed in a material sense into Heaven. And Christ draws special attention to this by speaking of the coming of those who would proclaim it. He calls them false prophets and false Messiahs! How strange it is that even to-day a few so-called Gospel critics spread the fable that the prospect of an approaching material Kingdom of God was a teaching given by Christ Jesus Himself ! Anyone able to read the Gospel of St. Matthew correctly knows that Christ Jesus was referring to a spiritual happening within the eventual reach of one who is approaching Initiation, but in the course of Earth-evolution becoming accessible to all those members of humanity who cleave to Him and in attaining higher stages of development bring about the spiritualisation of the Earth itself.

This aspect too must give us deeper insight into the structure of St. Matthew's Gospel. We shall then feel profound reverence for a Gospel from which, as from no other, we can learn unmistakably how the disciples of Christ Jesus were the first to receive teaching that was directed to the Ego itself. We picture Christ's disciples standing around Him and perceive how the forces of the Cosmos are working through the human body He bore. We picture Him guiding His disciples in a way that enables them to acquire the knowledge accessible to all who are approaching Initiation. We hear of human situations formed around Him. This is what makes St. Matthew's Gospel seem so near to us in a human sense. Through this Gospel we learn to know the man Jesus of Nazareth, the bearer of the Christ; we learn to know what Christ accomplished through His descent into the nature of Man. Even happenings in the heavenly worlds are presented in terms of human situations and relationships in the Gospel of St. Matthew.

In the final lecture tomorrow these things will be considered not only from the aspect of Initiation but from other aspects as well.

Yesterday our theme was more connected with the external, exoteric aspect of spiritual science.¹⁷⁴ Today we will have some comments on the inner, esoteric aspect of spiritual science.

When one speaks to a large or also a smaller audience about the discoveries made in spiritual research, which is our mission today, people will soon ask where such knowledge comes from. How can one also come to learn something about the higher worlds oneself? The question is very much to the point. One has to understand, however, that one cannot make one's own observations at a very early stage, and certainly not before one is familiar with the important ideas in the science of the spirit. It is necessary first to make the acquaintance, in a way, of the general ideas and thoughts that are part of the anthroposophical approach. One must have made the effort to gain some idea, and it is possible for everyone to do so, that there is truth in anthroposophy. Finally one must have tried, using human logic, to grasp the inner connections in what is taught in the science of the spirit.

In principle there can be no objection today to someone wanting to ascend through the stages of higher knowledge himself. Yes, people talk a great deal of the dangers and obstacles one meets in occult development—which is the term used for our inner development. There is much talk of hatha-yoga and raja-yoga,¹⁷⁵ but this is really just theory. If the thing is done the right way, if the individual who guides such inner development is also entitled to do so, there is really no danger. It is important to do things the right way, that is what matters. A lecture like the one I am giving today is not designed to give instructions—please let me stress this—for these must always be from person to person. Giving such instructions is a tremendous responsibility, and receiving them one must understand that the chosen individual really deserves one's trust. This trust is absolutely essential.

Occult or inner human development will thus gradually take the individual through the stages of higher knowledge. Let me give you an outline of the essential aspects of this, for information, as I said, not in form of instructions.

When someone has reached the summit of understanding, when someone is up on the mountain top, he has an open view in all directions. That is how it is in physical existence and also in the process of gaining insight. One does not have that open view when one has not yet reached the top but is on the way up. As one climbs higher, one is able to perceive more and more, but a great deal continues to be hidden by the mountain. This image of a mountain is a good one for inner development. Everyone who seeks to ascend to levels of higher insight must start from a point that is right for him. This means, people are different on this earth, also in their physical, etheric and astral constitutions. The outer natures of a Hindu, a person from the Near East, a European or American differ, much more so than someone who does not have occult knowledge may think. Exercises suitable for the inner development of anyone who has the Hindu nature cannot be used in that way for a Western person. It was wrong, therefore, to transfer the Oriental yoga teaching to Europe. This has done much harm. A Hindu's much softer body can be developed in a very different way than a European organism which has grown much harder due to Western civilization. Human natures thus differ much more than you may think. An anatomist cannot tell you anything about this, but someone who is clairvoyant and looks inside knows how tremendously natures differ.

We can divide present-day humanity into three types. There are still those for whom the Oriental yoga initiation is essentially right, others for whom the gnostic Christian way is open, and finally those—and they are by far the greatest in number—for whom the way known as the Rosicrucian way from the 14th century is the right one. Please note, these ways do not lead to different insights, for once you are up on the summit all things are the same. But the ways that lead to the summit are and must be different.

Many things can be achieved by taking the gnostic Christian way, and it is possible to gain the most sublime insights. But the Rosicrucian way is suitable for modern people because they may find themselves in situations where doubts arise and trouble looms because of our present-day way of life, and these must be removed for the sake of the individuals concerned and for their work in the world. This is only possible if one goes through inner training based on the Rosicrucian method, which is the right one for the Western world.

Let me present some aspects of gnostic Christian initiation, so that you may see it as a field about which much can still be learned today. I am then going to go straight on to Rosicrucian training. We'll leave the Oriental yoga way aside for today.

The Christian way is laid down in a text that is little understood outside occult circles. The gospel of John gives a complete outline of the right way of Christian initiation.

John's gospel is one of the most profound texts in the world, but one has to be able to read it in the right way, that is, one should not think that just reading it is enough and the right thing to do. It is a book for life. Above all you have to understand that even the first words are not written just for people to read or for philosophical speculation. They are written for meditation. We have to have them the proper way, however, not in the usual translation. The first verses of John's gospel must be created out of the substance of the language so that one has not only the meaning of the sentences but also their sound quality. The sound quality or value still matters for genuine occult life.

To meditate, we enter deeply into particular formulas, sentences or even words. But meditation as an important means of inner development is not a matter of entering into something we are given by our occult teacher in a philosophical or intellectual way. It is a matter of entering into the actual sound qualities. If you were to think about a sentence your teacher has given you, you could only develop thoughts about it that you already have. You are, however, to have something new. That is the important point. Sentences given for meditation open up the gates to the world of the spirit for you. They are based on experience gained over hundreds of years. Every letter, every turn of phrase is known to have an effect on the soul. You therefore need to meditate those first sentences to the letter. Correctly translated they are:

In the origin was the word, and the word was with god, and a god was the word.

This was in the origin with god.

All things have come into being through it, and except by this, nothing of what has arisen has come into being.

In it was life, and the life was the light of humanity. And the light shone into the darkness, but the darkness did not grasp it.

There came to be a human being, sent by god, his name John.

He came to bear witness that he might bear witness to the light and that through him all might believe.

He was not the light but a witness of the light.

For the true light that enlightens all human beings was to enter into the world.

It was in the world, and the world came into being through it, but the world did not recognize it.

Into individual human beings (all the way to the I-human beings) it came, but the individual human beings (the I-human beings) did not receive it.

Those however who did receive it were able to reveal themselves through it to be god's children.

Those who put their trust in its name have come into being not out of the blood, not out of the will of the flesh, not out of the will of man, but out of god.

And the word came to be flesh and dwelt among us and we have heard its teaching, the teaching of the one son of the father, full of loving devotion and truth.

If we had more time together I could tell you many things about these first sentences. Hundreds and hundreds of people have gone through the things I am now telling you about this Christian initiation. It has become practical experience for thousands. Let me just briefly indicate some stages of Christian initiation.

The pupils would first of all be told: For weeks, months, years you must set some time aside every morning when you let these first lines of John's gospel come alive in your soul. Turn your attention away from everything that is going on around you during this time. You must turn blind and deaf to everything around you, and these words should arise in your soul as though you were hearing them, day by day, over and over again.

This exercise will first of all have a particular effect on the soul. Its magic brings it about that such a person suddenly finds his dreams becoming regular, assuming regular forms. And then a moment will come when the individual knows that he is not in a dream world. Instead he'll know that he has a new reality around him—imaginative astral reality. Just as in ordinary conscious awareness we see tree and shrub around us, so we now see the things experienced in yonder world. Initially like dream images, and then more and more in a living vision seen in the waking state, the pupil will see the first twelve chapters of John's gospel before him.

After this experience the teacher of Christian initiation will say to his pupil: ‘You must now prepare for the experience of the 13th chapter. Imagine a plant. This grows out of the mineral world. If it were able to think and have inner responses it would have to say to the mineral world: “I grow out of you. You may be a lower world than I am, but I could not possibly live without you.” And it would have to bend down to the mineral world in gratitude and say: “I thank you, stone! I owe to you my whole existence.”’ An animal would have to speak in the same way to the plant. And man would have to bend down to the lower worlds of nature and have the same inner response. And everyone who has advanced more on the social scale should bend down before those who are below him and say: ‘Without you I could not have life.’

The pupil has to practice giving himself up to this completely and do so for weeks and months. Then two symptoms will arise, which are the same for everyone. He will first of all experience both the external and the inner symptom as a particular fact. He will see himself as the thirteenth, who washes the feet of the twelve. In washing their feet, Christ Jesus sought to make this great truth apparent to the twelve. This wondrous inner experience comes to the human being in the process of initiation. It also goes as far as external symptoms. He will experience something that feels as if he was dipping his feet in water. Nobody needs to be afraid of this; it will soon pass.

When the pupil has gone this far, the teacher will come and say: ‘Now you must enter into another sphere of inner responsiveness. In life pain and suffering come to us from all directions. You must enter into a condition where you meet all the suffering and all the pain that are coming from all directions in this world as an upright human being, so that they cannot harm you. You must stay with these things for weeks and months.’ Then a time comes when an astral symptom shows itself. He'll see himself in a vision of the scourging, with a sensation rather like it felt all over the body, which will pass; but the result will be that the pupil lets this feeling enter into the whole of his body. With this he has reached a level of maturity where he is able to land upright as life plies its scourge.

For the third stage he is given the instruction: ‘You must now enter into an inner feeling of how things would be with you if you not only had to bear pain and suffering but had scorn and derision poured over all that is most sacred to you. You must be able to stand up, using the powers of your inmost soul, and have a centre in you that enables you to stand erect.’ A new vision will then come, where the pupil sees himself wearing the crown of thorns. The external symptom of this is a kind of headache. This indicates, right down into the limbs, that this great experience has come.

Then comes the fourth station. The earthly body must become an outside thing for the pupil. Most people feel it is their I. The body has to be like a piece of wood, something external. The pupil must learn to say not ‘I am walking through this door’, but ‘I carry the body through this door.’ His body must be very much an object to him. Having lived into this for weeks and months, the pupil will have a vision, an astral experience where he sees himself crucified. That is the fourth station. Stigmata will appear for a brief period during meditation as an external symptom on the hands, feet and in the right side—not the left, as is generally thought. They indicate that this degree of development has also entered into the flesh.

The stages that follow cannot be discussed, for we do not have words for them. The fifth stage is the mystic death, where the pupil will first truly have the experience of a black curtain between him and reality. He will feel lost in a way, utterly isolated, as it were, until insight is gained. It is as if the world of the flesh has vanished, and something like an impenetrable black curtain lies before the eye of the soul. This is a moment everyone must go through on this way to initiation. You encounter all the truly great suffering and pain that may rest deep down in the soul, and all the evil there is in the world. This is the descent into hell. Then it seems to the pupil as if the veil tears apart and he looks into the other world.

There follows the entombment, an experience where one feels at one with the planets, and the seventh level, of which we cannot speak, for the individual has to separate his thinking from his brain to have even an inkling of it. This is ascension into heaven.

My aim in giving you this description of Christian initiation was to help you understand what it is about. It is a way full of renunciation. It may be followed quietly, attracting no notice, and there are people among you who have gone through all this. It happens between the lines in life, as it were, and the more serious it is the less will it be visible on the outside.

People must go through the Rosicrucian initiation to be armed against anything that may come from the outside. Many of the things you read about this in books are apt to make you think that the Rosicrucians are really charlatans, for that is how learned people often describe them.

True Rosicrucians have recognized one another by a secret sign since the 14th century. They must never speak of the true nature of Rosicrucianism to an outsider. But from a particular point in time that came in the 19th century it has indeed become necessary to tell people the elementary aspects of Rosicrucian initiation. Human beings are very gradually growing up and developing the maturity they will need if they are to learn something about these things. We'll not be able to go into the question today as to why it has to be like this and why the more sublime secrets must still remain hidden.

Rosicrucian initiation is also in seven stages. These are 1) study, Rosicrucian study; 2) gaining imaginative perception; 3) learning the occult script; 4) finding the philosopher's stone; 5) living experience of the relationship between microcosm and macrocosm; 6) entering wholly into the macrocosm, and 7) godliness.

Let me say once again that I can only give an outline, and no more.

Study is not the kind of learning we generally know. Instead one has to discover that there is a way of thinking that is still fluid and real, keeping out all sensory perceptions of the world around us. Western philosophers deny the existence of such a way of thinking.¹⁷⁶ They say it is only possible to think if the thought still has a residue of sensory perception in it. Those gentlemen do not know that other people have been able to do this, and they do not wish to believe it because they themselves are unable to think in this way. Man must learn to forget everything, to leave everything aside that influences the senses from the outside, yet without being an empty vessel. This is possible if one enters wholly into a pure thought content that has no sensual connection, as given by the spiritual scientist, and reflects on the thoughts that evolve. I have shown this way in my books, writing them in such a way that one element arises from another, as in a living being, so that one thought follows organically from another. You give yourself selflessly to the thought, and an inner separation results. Anyone who wishes to move to a higher level must read things written out of the science of the spirit in this way. Anyone who does not wish to reach a higher level may read them like an ordinary book. The former is the case because higher perception takes the human being into other worlds. You are now living on the physical plan—plan, not plane, for like the plan of a house it has nothing to do with being level. You thus come to different plans, into different worlds. At first you live here in the physical world, then you enter into the astral, imaginative world. It is a world we may describe as follows. Imagine a plant, green, with a red flower. You do special exercises that enable you not only to see what the senses see but to perceive how a cold flame form arises from the plant, is it were. You perceive floating colours. You thus perceive spiritual entities that you cannot perceive with the ordinary senses. Everything evaporates from the surface of things and becomes the expression of purely astral events. This world is much more real than our sense-perceptible world, for the world of the senses has been created out of that world of the spirit. This physical world has condensed out of the astral world. Matter is condensed spirit to the true occultist, and we can dissolve it again. The whole of our sense-perceptible world is condensed astral reality.

Behind this astral world is yet another world which may best be described by showing you how human beings come to gain living experience of it. When someone does the exercises I have described in my books, his dreams will first of all become regular. Try and enter into the nature of dreams. What is a dream? Let me give you some examples. They are taken from life, for I do not speak of other things.

Someone has dreamt he has caught a tree frog and then finds he has taken hold of a corner of his bed covers. The dream symbolized the occurrence. Another example is someone dreaming that he's in a dark, musty hole of a cellar full of spiders' webs. He wakes up with a headache. Some dreams may involve high drama. A student is standing at the door of the lecture theatre. Another one comes in jostles him, and a duel is fought with pistols. The shot rings out—and the chair next to the bed has fallen over. This minor incident has come to symbolic expression in the whole dramatic story of the dream. A farmer's wife dreams she's going to town and entering a church where the priest's sermon is of sublime things. Just when it gets really sublime, the priest begins to change. It looks as if he is growing wings and then he suddenly begins to crow. At that moment the farmer's wife wakes up and the cock is crowing outside. The cock's crow has been transformed and taken symbolic form in the dream.

Dreams are thus highly creative. Everything is chaotic in them. But life is given to this world and everything becomes harmonious and regular if you gain the certainty, up to a point, that this represents a reality. This is how it first shows itself, and later one takes things perceived in the world of dreams across into everyday life. Something develops which we may call ‘continuity of conscious awareness’.

Human beings also have dreamless sleep. The Rosicrucian pupil next learns to perceive entities and events around himself in a sleep state. The revelations of the spirit world sound forth from the darkness of dreamless sleep. In the Pythagorean schools this was called the world of the music of the spheres. The world of the spirit sounds forth. If you really want to hear something about the devachan, this must be such that it is described to you as a world of sound. Goethe, who had this degree of Rosicrucian initiation, knew of this: ‘The sun proclaims its old devotion in rival song with brother spheres.’ That is either nonsense or a higher truth. The physical sun does not resound, but the spirit of the sun is a real, resounding entity. And Goethe stayed with the metaphor; in part 2 of Faust, he wrote: ‘Resounding now for ears of spirit the new day is already being born.’ He wrote like that because the music of the spheres of which the Pythagoreans spoke was a reality to him. I can only refer to these things briefly. All things will speak to us, a new revelation will come forth.

Those are the stages the Rosicrucian pupil can reach by means of exercises. The worlds are always completely different, and someone who only knows the physical world can have no idea of the things one can learn in other worlds. One thing is the same for all worlds, however, and that is logical thinking. Our perceptions are entirely different in the astral, in the devachanic world, but the laws of thinking are the same in all three worlds. A Rosicrucian pupil must therefore first learn this way of thinking, so that he may keep to the proper path and not lose his way.

The 2nd stage consists in gaining imaginative perception. I can only tell you a few things that should explain what is meant by this. When you see a tear rolling down a cheek, you conclude that the soul is filled with sadness. When you see a cheerful face you conclude that the soul is cheerful. You draw these conclusions in relation to people. When you want to ascend to imaginative perception you must do this in relation to the whole world. The life of plants, animals and stones should express the physiognomy of the world soul for you. Some things must be like our cheerfulness, other things like tears wept by the earth spirit. This must become very real to the person. And much can be experienced in this way. The secret of the holy grail, the ideal of medieval Rosicrucian pupils, is connected with this.

Let us take an example. The Rosicrucian pupil would meet his teacher who would give him an exercise to do. I am going to put this in the form of a dialogue, though it has never been spoken dialogue. But what it conveys was practised and became living experience. It is entirely true and absolutely correct in every detail. The pupil would come to his teacher who would say to him: ‘Look at the plant. It extends its root into the soil, it grows upwards, opening its calyx at the top, and in there are its organs of fertilization and reproduction. Chastely and nobly and in purity it lets the sun's ray kiss it; the light, the sacred lance of love, which penetrates the calyx as a sunbeam and calls forth the potential that lies in the plant's organs of fertilization. You would have the wrong idea if in comparing the plant with a human being you were to think that the root is the head and the flower the lower part. Man is an inverted plant.’

The occultist thus sees the inverted plant in man and the inverted human being in the plant, with the animal between the two. ‘Look at the plant. It is the arm of the cross that goes down, the animal is the horizontal arm, and man the vertical arm.’¹⁷⁷ That is the original significance of the cross. It is the symbol for plant, animal and man as three realms of nature. Plato therefore wrote that the world's soul was crucified on the world's body. And the teacher would go on to say to the pupil: ‘Look at the human being, the human being in the flesh. What is this human flesh? Compare it with the matter contained in a plant. Plant matter is chaste and pure. Human flesh is full of passion and desire. Man is higher up on the evolutional scale, but this also means that he has taken in passion and desire.’ And the occult pupil would begin to intuit a future human being whose flesh would be pure and chaste again, like the chaste calyx of a flower which holds out its organs of fertilization to the sunbeam's sacred lance of love. Then his productive powers would reach out to the spirit just as today the plant reaches out to the lance of love, to the light. Those who sought to achieve this went through a transformation of the flesh. And so the pupil was presented with the great ideal of the human being who one day will be as pure and chaste as the plant. This ideal is called the holy grail. It is one of the images that speak to the heart and the whole soul. The pupil was able to rise higher not through thoughts but through images that influence the whole soul, captivating heart, mind and soul. Only then can imaginative perception be achieved.

The 3rd level involves learning the occult script. Something exists in this world which in occult life is called the vortex. It is to be found everywhere in nature and in the world of the spirit. Imagine you are looking up to the Orion nebula, which is a distinctive spiral. If you were a seer you would see that a vortex emerges like a figure 6, with a second vortex that is darker. The two intertwine. This also occurs in the world of the spirit.

We live in the age that follows the great Atlantean flood. Before that, our earliest ancestors were human beings of a very different kind. People imagine today that in those times human beings were just as they are now. But the physical conditions were completely different then. Atlantis was always in darkness, enveloped in masses of dense fog. It is important for you to know this. Old German mythology holds memories of Niflheim [land of mist] and Nibelungs [creatures of the mist]. Under those conditions the human constitution was very different. The Atlanteans also had a completely different culture. You might get an idea of this if I were to give you details of the way people heard articulated sounds in all things at that time. There were no moral laws. If someone wanted to know how to relate to a neighbour, he could not appeal to some authority or other; he would listen to the waves and then he would know.

It was a culture of which no trace seems to remain. It perished. When did this happen? We can see that in the heavens. About 8 centuries before the Christ was born the sun rose in the Ram. It takes about 2160 years to move through a sign of the zodiac. The sun moved into the sign of the Ram, or the Lamb, about 800 years before Christ. People felt the new constellation had brought them the new fruitfulness of spring, something new and good. We see from this that they felt the Lamb or the Ram to be important. Many things point to this, among them the legend of the Argonauts, in which the golden fleece plays such a role. The Christ himself is called the Lamb of God. The lamb was the symbol for offering veneration. Before that, the sun had been in the sign of the Bull, hence the veneration of the bull in Egyptian and Persian culture. Even earlier the sun passed through the sign of the Twins. In accord with this, duality played a great role in the Persian teachings of Ormazd and Ahriman. Traces of this still persisted in ancient Germanic culture. Before that, the sun was passing through Cancer. This was the period that followed the Atlantean flood. A vortex had occurred in the realm of the spirit.

This constellation with the occult sign of Cancer can still be seen in the calendar today. Many such signs are known to man. In reality this is nothing but a recreation of primal forces of nature. If you train your heart and mind to understand the occult signs you will steel your will with this occult script. You get to know the ways of the spirits that are behind nature. A faint echo remains in symbolic signs such as the pentagram and hexagram. One occult sign you often read about is the swastika.¹⁷⁸ The strange explanations given for it are quite unbelievable. In reality it is nothing but the sign for the astral sense organs, the wheels or lotus flowers, several of which are potentially present in the astral body—in the heart, the larynx, between the eyebrows. Astral vision begins when the last named of these wheels begins to turn. The swastika is the sign for this astral organ of perception.

The 4th level is called preparing the philosopher's stone. This is a reality. At the end of the 18th century someone who had got hold of something, but not exactly the right idea, put quite a good description of the philosopher's stone in a journal. He actually did not know himself how good it was. At that time a number of things from the occult school were wrongly made public, and so someone also described the philosopher's stone. This is actually something familiar to everyone, and many people handle it daily without having an idea. To help you see what this is about, follow me in a brief line of thought. Consider human breathing. We inhale oxygen, which changes our blue blood to red, and we exhale carbon dioxide, which means we are all the time exhaling poisonous matter. Plants on the other hand take up the carbon dioxide exhaled by humans and animals and retain the carbon to build up their bodies. They release the oxygen, so that humans can inhale it again. This is a cycle. Occultists attached great importance to this process. If you dig up a plant form that has become coal today you can see that the plant built up its body of carbon. Humans take in oxygen, changing blue blood into red; plants take in carbon dioxide and return the oxygen which humans then take in again.

Let us try and see what happens when the breathing process is regulated in a particular way in Rosicrucian training. The way in which it is done can only be passed on from person to person, but it is possible to speak of the effect. ‘A steady drip will hollow the stone’, as the saying goes. And that applies with the process I am now describing. The occult pupil is instructed by his teacher on doing his breathing exercises out of the spirit. It is an instruction, therefore, to regulate his breathing process in a particular way and this makes it possible for the human mind to expand a little as time goes on. It is something of which human beings normally know nothing and has to do with something that happens in the plant. The plant now becomes at one with him. Normally human beings exhale carbon dioxide and take in oxygen. The pupil must bring this to mind consciously. In his breathing he consciously experiences the change from carbon to oxygen, blue blood to red blood. He learns to do something in himself that is normally left to the plant. He will then be able to build up his own body. He learns to do so by means of regular breathing. This, then, is a real process in which the human being learns to purify his flesh also at the physical level. The alchemy of the human body lies in this. The human being is transformed into the vehicle for a pure, chaste incarnation that may be compared to a plant. The pupil is aware of something sublime, light and bright. He knows he only had to go through the flesh. That is the transformation of coal into diamond. You'll now understand the significance of bringing rhythm into the breathing in Rosicrucian training and know what was meant by the philosopher's stone. The regulated breathing process is the way to the philosopher's stone.

I am only touching on things lightly, but you'll understand that something profound lies behind the search for the philosopher's stone, something connected with the transformation of the whole of mankind, so that human beings will be different from the way they are today—they and the whole earth. That is how great and strong and firm, morally great, the powers of soul must be if man is to make the flesh, too, part of the process of redemption. We also have to redeem everything that exists around us, all creation.

The 5th level is to enter deeply into the relationship between microcosm and macrocosm. A great occultist of medieval times, someone we must first learn to read, used a beautiful image to show the relationship between macrocosm and microcosm. Paracelsus said: You see there the individual letters. Man is the word made up of the letters. And so we have to see man spread out in the whole of nature, and man himself as a compendium of nature. Paracelsus referred to a cholera patient as Arsenicus, for example, for the powers active in him are the same as those active in arsenic.

But there is more. When someone concentrates really hard on a particular part inside him, the point between the eyebrows—this, of course, is only a reference point—he will have a particular experience in which he is taken into the inner events of the great world. These correspond to the part which in the human microcosm lies between the eyes. And so the correspondence between macrocosm and microcosm has to be experienced bit by bit. Entering deeply into his inner life, the pupil must get to know the outside world.

At the 6th and 7th levels the Rosicrucian pupil comes to be at one with the whole world. He gains true knowledge of the outside world. And his feelings and his whole soul become one with the outside world to the same degree. This is the condition known as godliness. The earth's body is then his body. And the pupil achieves the stage known as being at one with the universe. It is a long road along one particular path. Those who have gone through it become messengers of the spiritual world, speaking from real experience.

It is a road anyone can follow today—certainly in principle. It will take a long time for some, and a shorter time for others. One of the best theosophists, the late Subba Row, said about the time needed, which people ask about so often: ‘It is true that one person needed 70 incarnations, another 7 incarnations, someone else again 70 years or perhaps 7 years; there have been people who achieved it in 7 months, and some in just 7 days, depending on their karma from former lives on earth.’ Setting out on the road one must be patient and persevere, knowing that one will be exposed to great dangers unless one has first gone through character training.

Let me give you an analogy. Take a green liquid produced by mixing blue and yellow. You can separate the blue from the yellow by using a chemical agent. Before that, the individual properties of the two solutions were not apparent. Now they show those properties. And that is how it is with the human being. High and low qualities are mixed. The lower ones are prevented from taking full effect because the higher ones have been added. If you now separate the two by doing the exercises you may find that someone who until now was more or less bearable grows malicious and cunning and also shows a whole lot of other bad characteristics. This is something you have to understand. The danger can definitely be prevented by doing specific preliminary exercises that establish a particular inner morality full of character.

The pupil must first learn to keep strict control of his thoughts. He must practise making one thought the focus of his inner life for a long period, the more intensely so the better. He must stick with it and let all thoughts follow from it. This exercise must be done for at least five minutes every day. The more the better, but one should not overdo it.

2) It is necessary to be able to take initiative in one's actions. This is done by the pupil doing one particular thing on his own initiative every day. It may be something quite small and insignificant, for instance watering one's flowers. After a time one takes up another initiative.

3) One has to gain mastery over pleasure and pain. There must be no more of being on top of the world one moment and down in the dumps the next. This mastery will make you more subtly receptive, but you yourself must be the master, not your inner responses.

4)There is need to be positive. A Persian legend about Christ Jesus will show you what is meant. The Christ was walking with some of his disciples. A dead, partly decomposed dog was lying by the roadside. The disciples turned away and said: ‘How horrible that creature is!’ The Christ stopped, however, and said: ‘Look how beautiful the animal's teeth are!’ You can look for and find something beautiful in the ugliest things, something great in the smallest of things. One must always look for the positive side.

5) One has to learn to be completely unbiased towards anything new. Absence of bias to the highest degree. People tend to say: ‘I've never heard of this before, seen this before; I don't believe it!’ We have to learn in the widest possible sense never to say something is impossible. There should be a place in our hearts where one allows it to be possible, say, that the church tower is at an angle if someone says it is at an angle. We should at least consider it to be possible if we hear such a thing.

The 6th level consists in bringing the 5 qualities into harmony.

The pupil will then have developed such inner strength that he will be protected from anything occult training might otherwise do to him. It would be wrong to set limits to occult training and say: ‘All I want is the ethical value.’ Anyone wishing to enter into the higher worlds must follow the indicated route. The road to the most sublime insights is also the way of greatest compassion. We must gain such compassion from insight, not with phrases. When someone has broken a leg all the people standing around full of compassion will be of no use, only the one individual who knows what to do and does it properly. Merely to preach theosophy is like standing in front of the stove and saying: ‘It is your duty to get the room warm.’ And it is the same if you tell people to practise brotherly love. Just as you have to put wood in the stove and put a match to it, so you have to give people what they need if their souls are to unite in one great brotherhood, and that is insight. True insight is the fuel for the great brotherly union among human beings. Today we have the age of materialism, and because of this people have gone their separate ways.

• 174. Public lecture on spiritual research and its mission given in Vienna on 21 February 1907. Rudolf Steiner spoke on the same subject in Berlin on 11 October 1906 (see Supersensible Knowledge (GA 55); tr. R. Stebbing. Hudson & London: Anthroposophic Press & Rudolf Steiner Press 1987.
• 175. Hatha-Yoga uses mainly external methods such as holding one's breath and special body positions. Raja-Yoga is the 6th to 8th stages on the way to salvation in Sankhya philosophy—concentration, meditation, complete absorption.
• 176. Rudolf Steiner was probably thinking mainly of E. von Hartmann. See note 166.
• 177. Rudolf Steiner often referred to this, e.g. in a lecture he gave in Basel on 22 Nov. 1907 (in GA 100); Typescript notes EN 50 at Rudolf Steiner House Library, London. There he said: ‘You draw the plant vertically, pointing to the earth, the human being also vertically, but pointing away from the earth, and the animal horizontally.’ Also in Berlin on 29 May 1905, in The Temple Legend GA 93); tr. J. Wood. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1985. This is in contrast to the drawing for the lecture given in Leipzig on 16 February 1907 (in this volume); see note 168.
• 178. The next public lecture Rudolf Steiner gave was the one on 29 April 1906 (in this volume). There followed the fundamental course of lectures he gave on 22 August–4 September 1906 in Stuttgart (At the Gates of Spiritual Science; GA 95).

On the meaning and spiritual origin of the cult of knowledge

It is quite impossible to make real progress in penetrating into higher worlds without going through the stage of imaginative knowledge.¹

The motif of the temple in Goethe and in Rudolf Steiner is to be a vessel for supersensible worship, which Goethe has performed by the three kings and which Rudolf Steiner has performed at the three altars.²

One important reason for working with cultic symbolism at all lies in the original knowledge that events in the higher world immediately adjacent to the physical world - the astral or imaginative world - express themselves in symbolic images that correspond to astral facts just as what is seen in the physical world corresponds to physical facts. In this sense, symbolic-cultic work can be seen as a practical tool for becoming familiar with the astral world. Rudolf Steiner once emphasized that the higher worlds cannot be penetrated in any other way than through symbolic representations. Literally it says: “In the various occult currents of the present time, the opinion prevails that there are other ways of ascending into the higher worlds than by using imaginative and symbolic images. And for people of the present time, ascending to the astral world with the help of symbolic signs or other occult means of education is associated with a certain fear, even aversion. If one raises the question: Are such states of fear justified? - one can say: Yes and No. - In a certain respect they are justified, in another respect they are completely out of place, because no one can really come up into the higher worlds without passing through the astral world.” (Cologne, December 29, 1907).

Regarding the statement about the spiritual origin of the cult of knowledge in the letter of August 15, 1906 (p. 68): “This ritual cannot be any different than the reflection of what is the fact of the higher planes,” there is an important addition in lectures from 1924, in which this fact of the higher planes is described as follows: “At the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, hovering very close by, of course, I mean in terms of quality, to the physical-sensuous world, there is a supersensible event which presents supersensible acts of worship, powerful developments of images of spiritual life...” These illuminated Goethe's spirit in miniature images and were shaped by him into his ” Fairytale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily (Dornach, September 16, 1924). One of the central motifs of this fairy-tale is the temple with the three kings, the representatives of wisdom, beauty, power or strength; also characterized by Rudolf Steiner as representatives of initiation: the golden king for the imagination, the silver king for the cognitive faculty of objective feeling, the brazen king for the cognitive faculty of the will (Berlin, October 24, 1908). The three altars with their servants are in line with this, both in the cult of knowledge and in the temple scenes of the mystery dramas. And if the letter of August 15, 1906, goes on to say that the ritual recognized by occultism for 2300 years ³ was prepared by the masters of the “Rosicrucians” according to European standards, the connection with supersensible cult appears in the following words: “The Rosicrucians said: Shape the world so that it contains wisdom, beauty and strength, then wisdom, beauty and strength are reflected in us. If you have devoted your time to this, you yourself will emerge from this earth with the reflection of wisdom, beauty and strength. Wisdom is the reflection of the manas; beauty, devotion, kindness is the reflection of the budhi; strength is the reflection of the atma. ... Man advances on earth, not by idle contemplation, but by assimilating wisdom, beauty and strength from the earth.

Goethe's riddle-tale, as it has often been called, was written at the end of the 18th century (1795). A century later, in 1899, as the so-called Kali Yuga, the spiritually dark age, came to an end and a spiritually bright age was to begin again, Rudolf Steiner grasped the far-reaching decision to bring the esoteric that lived in him to public display, in the sense of the decisive word for the whole event in Goethe's fairy tale, “It is time!” And true to the esoteric law of maintaining continuity, he took up the fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily, the images of which had been his meditation for twenty years. On August 28, 1899, the 150th anniversary of Goethe's birth, he published the essay “Goethe's Secret Revelation” and a year later, in the fall of 1900, he continued the interpretation of the Goethean apocalypse begun in it in a lecture given to the Berlin Theosophists and now became “completely esoteric”. ⁴ Twenty years later, on the eve of the first event in the first Goetheanum building, the so-called first college course, he referred to this lecture as the “primordial cell” of the anthroposophical movement, looking back on its development (Dornach, September 25, 1920).

This probably meant not only that the anthroposophical movement had its external beginning with this lecture, but also, unspoken, that at that time the realization of the central demand of the Goethe fairy tale had begun: to bring the mysteries - the temple - out of the hidden into the full light of day, that is, into the public sphere. For it was in this deeper sense that anthroposophical spiritual science was developed as the herald of the spiritually bright age that had dawned for humanity. And that is why, in the last year of his lecturing activities, Rudolf Steiner said the following, which is so important in connection with the description of the supersensible cult: “What is anthroposophy in terms of its reality? Yes, my dear friends, when you see through all the wonderful, majestic imaginations that existed as supersensible worship in the first half of the 19th century [and also at the end of the 18th century], and translate that into human concepts, then you have Anthroposophy” (Dornach, July 8, 1924).

Thus, a straight line leads from the perception of the cult in the supersensible world - which is undoubtedly connected with the ancient ritual prepared by the masters of the Rosicrucians for European conditions - through the Goethe fairy tale to the translation of these images of spiritual life into the scientific concepts of anthroposophy and to the design of the cult of knowledge.

In this sense, Rudolf Steiner brought the cult of knowledge, with its three altars, which Marie Steiner describes as the signs and seals of his work, “out of the depths of the temple in which they have stood since the beginning of mystery religions” and handed it over to “mankind” ($. 486).

Why the cult of knowledge was cultivated in fraternal union

It is not the one and the other and the third, but something completely new that arises through union.⁵

To answer the question of why cult symbolism is used in fraternal associations, certain spiritual facts must be taken into account. One is the nature of such associations, which Rudolf Steiner characterized in his lecture on brotherhood and the struggle for existence, given in Berlin on November 23, 1905, one day before he entered the Memphis-Misraim Freemasonry:

"Unity means the possibility of a higher being expressing itself through the united members. This is a general principle in all life.” Five people who are together, thinking and feeling in harmony with each other, are more than 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1; they are not merely the sum of the five, just as our body is not the sum of the five senses, but the living together, the living into each other means something very similar to the living into each other of the cells of the human body. A new, higher being is in the midst of the five, even in the midst of two or three. “Where two or three are united in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” It is not the one and the other and the third, but something completely new that arises from the union. But this can only come about if the individual lives in the other, if the individual draws his strength not only from himself but also from the others. But this can only happen if he lives in the other selflessly. Thus human associations are the mysterious places into which higher spiritual beings descend in order to work through individual people, as the soul works through the members of the body.

In our materialistic age, this is not easily believed, but in the spiritual scientific world view, it is not merely something figurative, but highly real. Therefore, the spiritual scientist is not just talking about abstract things when he speaks of the folk spirit or the folk soul or the family spirit or the spirit of another community. You cannot see this spirit at work in an association, but it is there, and it is there through the brotherly love of the personalities working in this association. Just as the body has a soul, so a guild, a brotherhood, also has a soul, and I repeat once again, it is not just a figure of speech, but is to be taken as a full reality.

The magicians are the people who work together in the brotherhood because they attract higher beings into their circle. There is no longer any need to invoke the machinations of spiritualism when working together in a community with brotherly love. Higher beings are manifesting themselves there. When we give ourselves up in the brotherhood, this giving up, this merging into the whole, is a strengthening, a fortification of our organs. When we then act or speak as a member of such a community, it is not the individual soul that acts or speaks in us, but the spirit of the community. This is the secret of the progress of future humanity, to work out of communities. Just as one epoch replaces another and each has its own task, so it is also with the medieval epoch in relation to our own, with our epoch in relation to the future. The medieval brotherhoods were active in the practical side of life, in the foundation of the useful arts. They only showed a materialistic life after they had preserved their fruits, their basis of consciousness, namely brotherhood, but had more or less disappeared after the abstract principle of the state, the abstract, spiritual life had taken the place of real empathy. It is incumbent upon the future to found brotherhoods again, and to do so out of the spiritual, out of the highest ideals of the soul. Human life has so far produced the most diverse associations; it has given rise to a terrible struggle for existence, which today has almost reached its peak. The spiritual-scientific world view aims to develop the highest goods of humanity in the sense of the brotherhood principle, and so you see that the spiritual-scientific world movement is replacing the struggle for existence with the brotherhood principle in all fields. We must learn to live a life of community. We must not believe that one or the other is capable of carrying out this or that.

Everyone would like to know how to combine the struggle for existence and brotherly love. That is quite simple. We must learn to replace struggle with positive work, to replace war with the ideal. Today, however, people understand too little what this means. We do not know what fight we are talking about, because we only talk about fights in life in general. There is the social fight, the fight for peace, the fight for the emancipation of women, the fight for land and so on, everywhere we look we see fight.

The spiritual scientific worldview now strives to replace this struggle with positive work. Those who have embraced this worldview know that fighting in any area of life does not lead to real results. Seek to introduce into life that which proves to be right in your experience and knowledge, to assert it without fighting your opponent. It can, of course, only be an ideal, but there must be such an ideal to be introduced into life today as a spiritual-scientific principle. People who attach themselves to other people and use their strength for the benefit of all are the foundation on which a fruitful development into the future can be built. The Theosophical [or Anthroposophical] Society aims to be exemplary in this respect. It is therefore not a propaganda society like others, but a brotherhood. In it, one works through the work of each individual member. One must only understand this correctly. The one who works best is not the one who wants to enforce his opinion, but the one who sees what he sees in his fellow brothers; who searches the thoughts and feelings of his fellow human beings and makes himself their servant. He works best within this circle, which can implement in practical life, not sparing one's own opinion. If we try to understand in this way, that our best powers arise from union and that union is not to be held merely as an abstract principle, but above all to be practiced in a theosophical way in every action, in every moment of life, then we will make progress. We must only not be impatient in this progress."

Another spiritual fact on which communal work on cult symbols is based is that the powers of thought developed through genuine cult symbols, when thought through long periods of time, increase to such an extent that they become external reality in later times. In this way progress is effected. For everything happens from within, not from without: “What is thought and feeling in one period is outer form in the following period. And the individualities that guide the evolution of humanity must implant the thought forms that are to become outer physical reality many millennia in advance. There you have the function of thought forms, which are stimulated by such symbolic images as Noah's Ark, the Temple of Solomon, and the four apocalyptic creatures man, lion, bull, eagle. ... Images that guide people when they surrender to them... to take part in the world that directly borders on theirs,” as it says in the lecture Cologne, December 28, 1907, in which the transformation of the human body is described as a prime example of how the ideas of Noah's Ark and Solomon's Temple are brought about.

These spiritual scientific insights also provide a concrete background for the following statement about Freemasonry: “If you ask me what Freemasonry actually consists of, I have to tell you in abstract terms: Freemasonry consists in its members thinking ahead, for several centuries, of the events that should advance the world, “which, however, has already been realized to a large extent today (Berlin, January 2, 1906).

If the whole of progress is served by symbolic-cultic fraternal cooperation, then the progress of the individual is also served. The fact that Rudolf Steiner points out that real consciousness of immortality is bound to practical fraternity, for the decisive law for the real consciousness of immortality is: Only that which a person does not do for himself alone in order to attain it contributes to the development of the consciousness of immortality, to a spiritual survival filled with full consciousness (Berlin, December 23, 1904).

As is well known, realizing ideals requires a great deal of patience. Rudolf Steiner spoke about this in an instructive and consoling way in a lesson in the following way:

Instruction lesson, Berlin, October 28, 1911

Perhaps there are some among you who feel oppressed because they cannot yet apply what they have learned here in their lives to their outer work, so that they can only keep taking in spiritual teachings and now have to ask themselves: Am I perhaps a spiritual hedonist? The wise masters of the East give us this answer: When spiritual teachings are assimilated, something happens that also lasts for all eternity. The spiritual development of humanity could not be furthered by the “spirits of the past” - whether people who lived in the distant past or gods who preceded us in their earthly development - if there were no souls into which they could pour these teachings. It is like the seed of a plant: as long as it is still inside the flower or ovary, it has no value; only when it enters the earth can it flourish. Of much more importance for the development of the earth are the people who allow works of art such as the Sistine Madonna, Faust and so on to have an effect on them than the artists themselves. If Raphael had only painted the [Sistine] Madonna and no one else had ever seen it, it would have been significant only for him, but not for eternity. Only by allowing people to be affected by works of art or other intellectual products is something created that will outlast the earth and be taken into the Jupiter state. The creator is not the most important thing; by far the most important are the viewers, readers and so on. If someone who creates a work of art or writes a book receives the inspiration for it from the spiritual world, then, until the moment of conception, it also has an eternal meaning for him. But as soon as he sets to work with pen or brush, he works only for the temporal, it has meaning only for him. Everything that is produced for the world is temporal. Only that which is inspired in human souls remains. The greatest weight is therefore not where one would expect it to be according to ordinary intellectual judgment. That the evangelists wrote the Gospels was significant for them, but it would mean nothing for eternity if there had not been innumerable hearts on which these Gospels had an effect. It is infinitely better to read a good book from an earlier time and let it have an effect on you than to write a bad book yourself. Those who believe they have to achieve something in the world should wait until their karma calls them to this or that work. And those who, for example, have had a spiritual vision and wonder whether they should share it with the world can apply the following criterion: If sharing it gives them joy, then they should certainly refrain from doing so. Only that which causes pain when communicated has value. Humorists who enjoy their ideas do not produce anything that has meaning for humanity; only those who have painfully relived the folly of men and have risen to their humor from it give something lasting in history. Nothing but “devotion to the spiritual world” can make a work fruitful in the world.

People may have accumulated treasures and feel the need to use them again for the benefit of humanity, but without occult insight it is impossible to know whether one or the other philanthropic institution will serve the good or the misfortune of people after a short time. No matter how many Samaritan deeds are performed and how many people are made happy, it could be, and without the devotion to the spiritual world just mentioned, it is even very likely, that great harm will be done, for instance to the children of those people, that is, to the next generation.

Here, in our lodge, because people are present with their thoughts, more is being done for the good of the world than all philanthropic work. Physical values are destroyed by using them for oneself; spiritual values, on the other hand, are created by absorbing them. Thus, the creator himself is not the most important thing at all. If one were to go back to the Akasha Chronicle to the age of Raphael, Michelangelo and so on, and pay attention only to them, one would not get the right picture. Likewise, if one were to only pay attention to what was in the souls of the great leaders of the mysteries when researching the Atlantean period in the Akasha Chronicle – which, by the way, is very difficult – one only sees the right thing when one pays attention to what was awakened in the hearts and souls of their disciples.

Anyone capable of writing a mediocre book is then also capable of understanding a good book from the past and will derive infinitely more benefit from it than from writing a mediocre book.

So it is not unauthorized enjoyment when the members endeavor to absorb what is offered here. Without this acceptance by the members, nothing could be done for the further spiritual development of people. Then people would have to fall completely prey to materialism; future generations would be sick in body and soul. The children born among us would not find the thoughts they need for their proper development in the spiritual atmosphere if there were no circles in which spiritual knowledge is received, even if it is not carried out. Materialism sins so much that one cannot do enough in this direction, that exaggeration is not possible at all. Even if ten or a hundred times more were studied than is really the case, it would still not be too much to make up for what is sinned against the world through materialism.

Regarding the name of the working group

It was a “cult of knowledge”.

For inner reasons, the working group had no actual name for Rudolf Steiner (see page 237). It was therefore sometimes abbreviated to “FM” (Freemasonry), sometimes to “ME” (mystica aeterna), and later, at Rudolf Steiner's express request, to “MD” (Misraim Service) (see page 94). For the present publication, the term “cult of knowledge” was chosen because it best expresses the essence of Steiner's intentions. It was in 1923 when he answered a question from priests of the “Christian Community” about the relationship between their cult and the earlier esoteric cult:

"The earlier cult was purely demonstrative. It was a cult of knowledge with degrees. The first degree brought the knowledge of the earthly man, showed man from the Lemurian time to the present, in the imagination. The second degree represented the relationship to the spiritual world, the third the secrets of the gate of death and so on. This cult was a non-temporal, interdenominational and interreligious one; only a certain degree had a Christian character. The use of this cult had to be discontinued because the demonstration character could no longer be made clear to the outside world.6

Even before Rudolf Steiner referred to the cult as a “cult of knowledge” in this question-and-answer session, he had pointed out the importance of knowledge for the cultic in his Dornach lecture of December 30, 1922, with the words: “For everything that is cultic must ultimately dissolve if the backbone of knowledge is lacking.”

Admission Procedure

Those approaching the institution were told in the clearest possible terms that they were not joining a religious order, but that as participants in ceremonial acts they would experience a kind of sensitization, a demonstration of spiritual knowledge. If some of the forms in which members were accepted into traditional orders or promoted to higher degrees were retained, this too had nothing to do with the purpose of such an order, but only to illustrate spiritual ascent in soul experiences through sensual images. ⁷

An example of how admission was sought can be found in a letter from the leader of the Munich group, Sophie Stinde, which Steiner passed on to Rudolf Steiner on February 24, 1908: “Countess H. would like to become a member of the FM. but wanted to ask you in Stuttgart beforehand whether she could join at her next visit or whether you thought it better if she waited. Since she did not get around to asking you in Stuttgart, I suggested that I should ask you. Since we probably have recordings, we could include her, if you don't think it's too soon for Grf.H. Miss L. was with us recently and repeated that she and Dr. W. would like to be included in March. Miss Kr. and Mr. R. also repeated the request. (...) We had thought of the work plan as follows: On the 17th in the evening, Lodge. On the 18th in the morning ES. - In the evening public lecture Man and Woman. On the 19th in the morning FM-admission. We would certainly have placed the admission before the instruction, since we know that you prefer it that way, but since there is a public lecture on the 19th in the evening, we must refrain from it this time, since the admission will be a very extensive one after all."

Depending on how many candidates were admitted, the admissions often lasted for hours; individual admissions were only undertaken in exceptional cases. Before the actual admission, there was a preparatory session in which the candidates were informed about the tasks and duties. Only two records of Rudolf Steiner's remarks in such preparatory sessions are available (p. 143f.). In exceptional cases, such preliminary meetings were also formally organized, as can be seen from a letter from Rudolf Steiner to Sophie Stinde dated June 10, 1908, which states: “St's are to be admitted to the FM this time. It will not do to have a short preliminary celebration on Monday for the FM. The most urgent wish of the St. is to be admitted precisely on his 50th birthday. Of course, the admission cannot take place until Tuesday – the day after his birthday – but one could briefly – perhaps without a lodge ceremony – hold a preliminary celebration of the admission on Monday, which would be specially arranged.

On the degrees

A truth is either known or not known. ... Therefore, the democratic principle is impossible in matters of knowledge.⁸

Regarding the right to work in degrees, one of the lectures given during the period of preparation of the circle states: “Truth is not something about which one can have opinions. One either knows a truth or one does not know it.... Just as little as one can discuss whether the sum of the angles of a triangle is such and such or has so many degrees, just as little can one discuss higher truths. Therefore, the democratic principle is impossible in matters of knowledge (Berlin, December 16, 1904).

In this sense, the working group of the Knowledge Cult was structured in degrees. One participant described it as follows: “It was an institution in which there were different degrees to which the participants were promoted, depending on the readiness of their souls for the content of these degrees, as determined by their karma. Promotion to a higher degree took place partly in forms that were also practiced in occult societies, for example in Freemasonry - but not in imitation of such orders, but because they resulted from spiritual research. ... It is easy to see that the esoteric impulses flowed ever more abundantly as the degrees rose, and that in the almost ten years of the events – right up to the outbreak of war – the experiences of these hours meant something tremendously profound for the development of the soul life of many participants.” ⁹

There were nine degrees in all, divided into three and six, forming two sections or classes, which, together with the so-called “ES”, formed the three sections or classes of the Esoteric School, as it existed from 1904 to 1914. In the first three degrees, the emphasis was on ritual acts; in the following six degrees, which, according to tradition, only a few belonged to, teaching was said to have been the main focus. The extent to which nine degrees correspond to the number of degrees that can be taught in a true secret training course today was once explained as follows:

”...Now it is very important to know that every occult fraternity is built upon the foundation of three degrees. In the first degree, when the symbolism is used in the right way (and by 'right' I naturally mean as I have just indicated for our fifth post-Atlantean period), the souls come to the point where they have a precise inner experience of the fact that there is knowledge independent of ordinary physical-sensory knowledge. And in the first degree they must have a certain sum of such knowledge independent of the physical. Everyone in the first degree today within the fifth post-Atlantic period should know approximately what is in my “Occult Science”. Everyone who has reached the second degree should know - that is, know inwardly in a living way - what is contained in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds”. And anyone who has reached the third degree and receives the meaningful symbols, signs, grip and word of the third degree already, knows what it means to live outside of one's physical body. That would be the rule, that would be what is to be attained.

But then there are people who arrive at the so-called high degrees, at higher degrees. Now, this is certainly an area where an enormous amount of vanity comes into play, because there is fraternization in which one can reach ninety or more than ninety degrees. Now just imagine what it means to bear such a high degree! The so-called Scottish High Degree system has thirty-three degrees, simply due to an error arising from grotesque ignorance. This system is built on the three degrees that run in the way I have described. So there you have the three degrees, which, as you can see, have their profound significance. But after these three degrees, there are another thirty. Now you can imagine what a high being you are if you are able to experience yourself outside of your body in the third degree, what a high being you are if you go through another thirty degrees after that. But it is based on a grotesque error of knowledge. In the occult sciences, degrees are read differently than in the decimal system: they are read in such a way that one does not calculate according to the decimal system, but according to the system of numbers that are currently being considered. So when you write: 33rd degree, in reality, according to the system of numbers that are being considered, it means: 3 times 3 = 9. ... Just because people can't read, they read 33 instead of 9.

Well, but let's disregard these vanities. There are still six degrees that build on these three degrees, and these are counted as legitimate degrees. And when they are gone through, they already give very significant results. But basically, they cannot be fully experienced in the present. It is absolutely impossible. They cannot be fully experienced because humanity in the fifth post-Atlantic period is not yet so far advanced that all that can be experienced can actually be experienced. For not enough has emerged from the spiritual worlds – I will not say in the way of knowledge, but in the way of the exercise of knowledge. This will come out only later.” (Berlin, April 4, 1916)

On the symbolism of the institution

In fact, Freemasonry originally emerged from the mystery schools through a betrayal. This is why many of the symbols found in Freemasonry can also be found here.¹⁰

The interior design of the lodge or temple has been handed down in detail only for the first two degrees, but it is likely that it was also largely the same for the third degree, at least: walls draped in black, which were transformed into glowing red in the final act, at the Rose Cross conclusion. ¹¹ On the east wall, in a blue square of cloth, there was a radiant sun with a triangle in the middle. On the ceiling was a lamp with a second-degree letter “G” made of gilded cardboard or sheet metal.¹² The floor was covered by a carpet in a black and white checkerboard pattern. At the edges of the large carpet were three altars: in the east the altar of wisdom (master), in the south the altar of beauty (2nd overseer), in the west the altar of strength (1st overseer). ¹³ Each officiant carried a herald's staff, presumably as in the Mystery Dramas. A large candelabrum stood beside each altar. A plumb line made of gilded sheet metal was affixed to the front of each altar. Furthermore, each altar had a candle, matches, scissors for cutting candles, a candle snuffer, a hammer and a trowel. A chalice belonged to the altar of the East, the so-called “Holy of Holies”; a censer with a bowl and an angle to the altar of the South; two compasses, a yardstick and a skull to the altar of the West.

At the altar of the East stood a cross with a wreath of thorns, which in the final act, at the Rose-Cross conclusion, was exchanged for a wreath of red roses. Close by stood a somewhat smaller altar with the 13th chapter of the Gospel of John open at the Bible, on which lay a gilded sheet metal triangle and a ladle that fit into each other. In the beginning, one had to swear at this altar not to reveal the secrets of the Temple. This was in keeping with an ancient tradition in occult contexts.¹⁴

Although this was also linked to the old, it was later abandoned, as reported by participants. For Rudolf Steiner, people in the modern age should be increasingly called upon to take personal moral responsibility in their esoteric lives. In the north, outside the large carpet, stood the two round columns Jakin and Boaz, also called the Pillars of Hercules. The left one (Jakin) was brick red; on top lay a hewn cube-shaped stone (blue). The right one (Boaz) was dark blue; on top of it lay an unhewn stone (red). Between the two columns lay the symbolic table, which Elisabeth Vreede's sketch shows as a “small carpet”, as it is also used in general Masonic lodges (so-called Tapis, Tableau). The participants had their seats on the north and south sides of the lodge room.

In the third degree, a fourth altar appeared in the north, as well as a coffin, just as in certain temple scenes in the mystery dramas.

The sketches for the first and second degree settings, as well as the detailed sketches and explanations, were done by the Dutchwoman Elisabeth Vreede.

Clothing

There is no authentic information about clothing. It is known that the apron (mason's apron, lambskin) was worn, and that Rudolf Steiner wore an alb (the long white priest's robe), over which a red cloak was thrown when the color of the room changed from black to red.

For the symbolic meaning of such clothing, see the remarks in the workers' lecture of June 4, 1924, reproduced on page 272 under “Zeichen, Griff und Wort”.

Regarding the rituals

Everything that was presented in terms of the content of “actions” ... was without historical reference to any tradition. In the possession of the formal diploma, only that was cultivated which resulted from the visualization of anthroposophical knowledge.¹⁵

All the extant ritual texts are summarized in the second part of this volume. It is known that there were also one or two smaller ritual acts: for example, the so-called baptism of fire in the fourth degree. Before a burning sulfur flame, the person in question was given the name that is appropriate for him in the spiritual world; ¹⁶ There are also isolated reports of marriages. But there are no texts for these small ceremonies. Presumably there were none for them, or no ritual text was necessary.

The rituals can no longer be reconstructed in their full entirety, insofar as they were determined not only by the wording but also, and just as essentially, by the actions, the implements, the clothing and so on. But there is not enough authentic information available about these.

At the beginning of 1913, after some members left the Erkenntniskultischer Arbeitskreis in connection with the separation from the Theosophical Society and the founding of the independent Anthroposophical Society, and apparently betrayed some of it, Rudolf Steiner announced that it had become necessary to change the rituals as a result. In the notes from the instruction session for all degrees in Berlin on February 8, 1913, it says: “Because of this betrayal, it has become necessary to change our ritual and to transform it so that - while the meaning remains essentially the same - the rituals will nevertheless be different from before, so that they will not resonate with those of the others.” Another participant noted the statement as follows: “We were talking about those who have fallen away. In order for their thoughts not to resonate with our work here, it is necessary to change the ritual.” There is no original document for this announced change. However, one participant has passed on the extent to which the words spoken at the three altars have undergone a certain change (see page 170).

Ritual events only take place in places where appropriate rooms are available, such as in the anthroposophical centers in Berlin, Hannover, Cologne, Munich, Stuttgart, among others, but also in other countries. ¹⁷

On the explanations of the cult of knowledge and the symbolism of the furnishings

Theosophy is the inner truth of these ceremonies; it says what these ceremonies show, it has the spirit of these signs and images.¹⁸

The instruction or teaching sessions in which the rituals and the symbolism of the furnishings were explained and general spiritual scientific research results were presented, took place between the ritual beginning and the ritual end of a meeting. But there were also instruction sessions without ritual; mostly for one degree, sometimes for several, sometimes for all degrees together.

Since it was not allowed to take notes during such lessons, it should be noted that all the records handed down were made afterwards from memory and are therefore fragmentary or only in note form, and in terms of style, and possibly also content, do not always do justice to Rudolf Steiner.

In the present documentation, only those notes were included that directly refer to the cult of knowledge, the symbolism of the furnishings, as well as the temple legend and the golden legend. Since this information is widely scattered, it was extracted and assigned to the respective terms for a better overview. In some cases, where no explanations from instruction hours are available, illustrations from general lectures given later were included.¹⁹ On the other hand, notes from general spiritual scientific presentations were not included, since these can be found, for the most part, in better reproduction in the part of the lecture work that is already available in the complete edition, because they are based on stenographic notes.

Regarding the Temple Legend and the Golden Legend as they appeared in the rituals.

The nature of Hiram is in all of us; we must bring it to resurrection in us.²⁰

Legends as pictorial representations of esoteric truths play an important role in all secret teachings, since such images summarize a vast number of ideas and not only affect the intellect but also the feelings of the human being. In this sense, the two legends were of great importance because their images reflect the exemplary advancement of the Hiram individuality on the occult path.

The Temple Legend - of which it was once said that he who takes it up takes up something “that forms his thinking in a certain lawful way, and lawful thinking is what matters” ²¹ - appeared in two forms. The part symbolically interpreting the evolution of humanity was taught as meditation material when entering the first degree; the conclusion of the legend, referring to Hiram's death and resurrection, formed part of the initiation ritual into the third degree. The legend was repeatedly treated in instruction hours. The records handed down are summarized in the section 'Explanations of the Temple Legend'. The information contained therein about the re-embodiments of Hiram Abiff requires supplementation, since it forms only part of what may be called Rudolf Steiner's Hiram research in the field of reincarnation. This supplement is attached to the section 'Explanations of the Temple Legend'.

The Golden Legend – referred to in one of the traditional explanations as the “second” Master Legend – was symbolized by the two round columns, Jakin and Boaz. The text of this legend and the explanations that have been handed down can be found in the section “Explanations of the symbolism of the furnishings”.

• 1. From “The Stages of Higher Knowledge,” GA 12.
• 2. E.A. Karl Stockmeyer, a member of the working group on the cult of knowledge, in his essay “On the Unity of Temple and Cult in the Context of the Goetheanum Building Idea,” contained in “Bilder okkulter Siegel und Säulen. Der Münchner Kongreß Pfingsten 1907,” GA 284.
• 3. According to a note by Günther Schubert, Rudolf Steiner said that the whole thing goes back to Melchizedek.
• 4. "My Life” (Chapter 30), GA 28. Marie Steiner noted in a notebook (archive number 21): 'When Rudolf Steiner first came among people with the intention of lifting the veils of esotericism, he took Goethe's fairy tale as his starting point and spoke about the altars of wisdom, beauty and strength. He placed them in the temples of his mystery dramas and spoke to us again and in greater depth about their significance. And again he placed them in our esoteric school and had us approach the various aspects of thinking, feeling and willing, which are an expression of these altars, again and again.”
• 5. From a lecture in Berlin, November 23, 1905.
• 7. “My Life”, see page 95f.
• 8. Berlin, December 16, 1904.
• 9. Adolf Arenson in “Circular letter to the members of the Anthroposophical Society”, October 1926.
• 10. Instruction Lesson Berlin December 16, 1911, see p. 93.
• 11. Rudolf Steiner also indicated the transformation from black to red for the “Easter Night” from Goethe's “Faust”, which he and Marie Steiner staged.
• 12. It is known that the “G” had various meanings, such as “gnosis” or “geometry”.
• 13. At the altar of the east, Rudolf Steiner and Marie von Sivers always officiated together, while the other altars had alternating officiants.
• 14. See page 245.
• 15. “My Life Course”, see page 95f. of the present volume.
• 16. A baptismal ceremony with water took place in the first degree, see page 208 ff. of the present volume.
• 17. From documents in the archive of the Rudolf Steiner estate administration, it can be seen that there must have been translations of Rudolf Steiner's ritual texts (at least in part) into English and French.
• 18. From notes by Marie Steiner from the lecture in Bremen, April 9, 1906.
• 19. Evidence of symbolism in cultural history can be found in Joseph Schauberg, op. cit.
• 20. See the section 'Notes on the Temple Legend'.
• 21. Berlin, May 15, 1905.

Report by Rudolf Steiner in Lucifer-Gnosis no. 34/1907

It was the task of the German Section of the Theosophical Society to organize this year's congress of the “Federation of European Sections”. It is therefore more fitting that here, from within the circle of the organizers, there is less talk of what has been achieved and more of what has been intended and striven for. For the organizers know only too well how little of what was achieved has been achieved, and how much has been achieved that could not be achieved on such an occasion. Therefore, the following should only be understood as a description of the underlying ideas.

Munich was chosen as the venue: the time was the days of Pentecost, May 18, 19, 20 and 21. The questions that the organizers asked themselves in their preparations were: How can the task of the Theosophical movement be expressed within the current spiritual life through such a congress? How can it give a picture of the ideals and aims of the theosophical work? Since the event is naturally limited by the circumstances, it can only provide a limited answer to these questions. It now seems particularly important that the comprehensive character of the theosophical movement be emphasized on such occasions. First of all, the focus of this movement is the cultivation of a worldview based on knowledge of the supernatural. And at such a congress, people come together who, in the spirit of such a worldview, work across all national borders and other human differences on spiritual ideals that are common to all of humanity. Mutual inspiration in the best sense will be the most beautiful fruit of such events. In addition, it will be shown how the theosophical work should really be integrated into the whole of life in our time. For the spiritual foundation of this movement cannot be called upon to express itself only in thoughts and ideas, in theories and so on; rather, as a content of the soul that has emerged in our time, it can have a fertilizing effect on all branches of human activity. Theosophy can only be grasped in the right sense if we set it the ideal of inspiring not only the imagination and the human soul, but the human being as a whole. If we wish to interpret its mission in this sense, we may recall how, for example, the world view of the corresponding time found expression in the buildings and sculptures (e.g. the Sphinx) of the Egyptians. The ideas of the Egyptian worldview were not only thought by the souls; they were made visible in the environment of the human eye. And think of how everything that is known of Greek sculpture and drama is the worldview of the Greek soul, shaped in stone and depicted in poetry. Consider how in medieval painting Christian ideas and feelings were revealed to the eye, how in the Gothic period Christian devotion took form and shape. A true harmony of the soul can only be experienced where the human senses are reflected in form, shape and color and so on as an environment, which the soul knows as its most valuable thoughts, feelings and impulses. Out of such thoughts arises the intention to give a picture of theosophical striving in the external form of the event at a congress. The room in which the meeting takes place can reflect the theosophical feeling and thinking around the visitor. According to our circumstances, we could not do more than sketch out what might be considered an ideal in this regard. We had decorated the assembly hall in such a way that a fresh, stimulating red formed the basic color of all the walls. This color was intended to express the basic mood of the celebration in an external view. It is obvious that some people will object to the use of “red” for this purpose. These objections are justified as long as one relies on an esoteric judgment and experience. They are well known to the esotericist, who nevertheless, in accordance with all occult symbolism, must use the color red for the purpose in question. For him, it is not a matter of what the part of his being feels that is devoted to the immediate sensual environment; but what the higher self experiences in the spiritual realm while the external environment is physically seen in red. And that is the exact opposite of what the ordinary sensation of “red” says. Esoteric knowledge says: “If you want to attune yourself in your innermost being as the gods were attuned when they gave the world the green plant cover, then learn to endure ‘red’ in your surroundings as they had to.” This indicates a reference to the higher human nature in relation to “red” that the genuine [esotericist] has in mind when he presents the two opposing entities of the creative world ground in the occult symbolism in such a way that, downward, the green as a sign of the earthly, upward the “red” as a sign of the heavenly (elohistic) creative powers. Much more could be said about the reasons for opposing this color, and much could be said in refutation of these arguments. However, it may suffice here to make this brief comment: this color was chosen in accordance with occultism.

On the walls (on both sides and at the back wall) were placed the so-called seven apocalyptic seals in a size appropriate for the room. They represent certain experiences of the astral world in pictures. There is a story behind them. At first, some viewers may mistake such pictorial representations for ordinary symbols. But they are much more than that. Anyone who simply wants to interpret what is depicted in them symbolically with the mind has not penetrated the spirit of the matter. One should experience the content of these seven pictures with one's whole soul, with one's undivided mind; one should shape it inwardly in one's soul in terms of form, color and content, so that it lives inwardly in the imagination. For this content corresponds to very specific astral experiences of the clairvoyant. What the clairvoyant wants to express in such images is not at all an arbitrary symbol, or even a straw-thin allegory, but something that is best illustrated by way of comparison. Take a person who is illuminated in a room by a light in such a way that his shadow is visible on a wall. The shadow is in some respects similar to the person casting the shadow. But it is a two-dimensional image of a three-dimensional being. Just as the shadow relates to the person, so what is depicted in the apocalyptic seals relates to certain experiences of the clairvoyant in the astral world. The seals are, of course, in a figurative sense, silhouettes of astral processes. Therefore, they are not arbitrary representations of an individual, but anyone who is familiar with the corresponding supersensible processes will find their silhouettes in the physical world. Such things cannot be invented in their essential content, but are taken from the existing teachings of the secret scientists. A student of these matters may have noticed that some of our seals correspond with what he finds in this or that work, but others do not. The reason for this is that some of the imaginations of occult science have already been communicated in books; but the most important part – and the true part – may only now, in our time, be made public. And part of the theosophical work must consist in handing over to the public some of the material which has hitherto been kept strictly secret by the appointed custodians. This is demanded by the development of the spiritual life of our time by the exponents of occult science.

It is the development of humanity, the expression of which in the astral world must form one of the most essential foundations of occult knowledge, which is expressed in these seven seals. The Christian esotericist will recognize them in a certain way in the descriptions of the “Revelation of St. John”. But the form they presented in our festival hall corresponds to the secret-scientific spiritual current that has been the dominant one in the West since the fourteenth century. The mysteries of existence, as they are reflected in these images, represent ancient wisdom; the clairvoyants of the various epochs of humanity see them from different points of view. Therefore, according to the necessary developmental needs of the times, the forms change somewhat. In the “Revelation of St. John” it is “set in signs” what is to happen “in brief”. Those who know how to read a secret-scientific form of expression properly know that this means nothing other than a reference to the secret-scientific signs for certain imaginations that can be experienced in the astral world and that are related to the nature of man as it reveals itself in time. And the Rosicrucian Seals also represent the same. Only very sketchily, with a few words, shall the infinitely rich content of the seals be interpreted. Basically everything - even the seemingly most insignificant - in these pictures means something important. The first seal represents man's entire evolution in the most general way. In the “Revelation of St. John” this is indicated with the words: “And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks; and in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about upon his chest with a golden girdle. His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like a flame of fire. His feet were like brass glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the rushing of many waters. And he had seven stars in his right hand; and out of his mouth came a sharp, two-edged sword; and his face shone like the bright sun.” In general terms, such words point to the most comprehensive secrets of human development. If one wanted to present in detail what each of the deeply significant words contains, one would have to write a thick volume. Our seal depicts such things. Among the physical organs and forms of expression of the human being, some represent, in their present form, the downward stages of development of earlier forms, and have thus already passed their peak. Others, however, represent the initial stages of development and are, as it were, the rudiments of what they are to become in the future. The esotericist must know these secrets of development. The organ of speech represents an organ that will be much higher and more perfect in the future than it is at present. By pronouncing this, one touches on a great secret of existence, which is often also called the “mystery of the creative word”. This gives a hint of the future state of the human speech organ, which will become a spiritual organ of production (procreation) when the human being is spiritualized. In myths and religions, this spiritual production is indicated by the appropriate image of a “sword” coming out of the mouth. In this way, every line and every point in the picture signifies something that is connected with the secret of human development. The fact that such pictures are made does not merely arise from a need for a sensualization of the supersensible processes, but it corresponds to the fact that living into these pictures - if they are the right ones - really means an arousal of forces that lie dormant in the human soul, and through the awakening of which the representations of the supersensible world emerge. It is not right for the supersensible worlds to be described only in schematic terms in theosophy; the true path is to awaken the imagination to the images presented in these seals. (If the occultist does not have such images at hand, he should verbally describe the higher worlds in appropriate images.) - The second seal, with the appropriate accessories, represents one of the first stages of development of humanity on earth. In its primeval times, humanity on earth had not yet developed what is called the individual soul. What was still present at that time, and what is still found in animals today, is the group soul. Anyone who can follow the old human group souls on the astral plane through imaginative clairvoyance will find the four types of group soul represented in the four apocalyptic animals of the second seal: the lion, the bull, the eagle and the man. This touches on the truth of what is often so dryly allegorized in the interpretation of the four animals. The third seal represents the secrets of the so-called harmony of the spheres. Man experiences these secrets in the interval between death and a new birth (in the “spirit land” or what is called “Devachan” in the usual theosophical literature). However, the account is not given as it is experienced in the “spirit realm” itself, but rather as the events of this realm are reflected in the astral world. It must be noted that all seven seals are experiences of the astral world; however, the other worlds can be seen in their reflections in the astral. The angels blowing trumpets in the picture represent the original spiritual beings of the world phenomena; the book with the seven seals indicates that the mysteries of existence are “unsealed” in the experiences illustrated in this picture. The “four horsemen of the Apocalypse” represent the stages of human development through long earth cycles. The fourth seal represents, among other things, two pillars, one rising from the sea and the other from the earth. These pillars hint at the secret of the role played by red (oxygen-rich) blood and blue-red (carbon-rich) blood in human development, and how this blood changes in line with human development from distant primeval times to distant future times. The letters on these pillars point to this developmental secret in a way known only to the initiated. (Old interpretations of the two letters given in public writings or in certain societies remain only a superficial, exoteric interpretation.) The book in the cloud points to a future state of man in which all his knowledge will be internalized. In the Book of Revelation we find the significant words: “And I took a little book out of the angel's hand, and ate it up...”

The sun in the picture points to a cosmic process that will take place at the same time as the marked future stage of humanity; the earth will enter into a completely different relationship with the sun than it currently does in the cosmos. And everything is depicted in the picture so that all the arrangements of the parts, all the details and so on, correspond exactly to specific real processes. The fifth seal represents the further development of man in the future in a cosmos in which the conditions just indicated will have occurred. The future human being, who will have a different relationship to the sun than the present one, is represented by the “woman who gives birth to the sun”; and the power that he will then have over certain forces of the world, which today express themselves in his lower nature, is represented by the “sun woman” standing on the beast with the seven heads and ten horns. The woman has the moon under her feet: this points to a later cosmic relationship between the sun, earth and moon. The sixth seal represents the evolved human being with even greater power over the lower forces of the universe. The way the image expresses this is reminiscent of Christian esotericism: Michael holds the dragon bound. Finally, the seventh seal is that of the “Mystery of the Grail”, as it was in the esoteric current beginning in the fourteenth century. In the picture there is a cube, representing the world of space, from which the world serpent arises from all sides of the cube, insofar as it represents the higher forces living out in the lower: From the mouth of the snake comes the world line (as a spiral), the symbol of the purified and refined world forces; and from this arises the “holy grail,” which is confronted by the “dove.” All of this points - and quite appropriately - to the mystery of the creation of the world, of which the earthly one is a lower reflection. The deepest mysteries lie in the lines and figures and so on of this seal. Between each two seals a column was inserted. These seven columns could not be executed in plastic form; they had to be painted as a substitute. But they are definitely intended as real architectural forms and correspond to the “seven pillars” of the “true Rosicrucian temple”. (Of course, the arrangement in Munich does not quite correspond to that in the “Rosicrucian Temple of Initiation”, because there each such column is duplicated, so that when one walks from the back wall towards the front, one passes through fourteen columns, two of which are always facing each other. This is only a hint for those who know the true facts; for us, only a general idea of the meaning of this column secret should be awakened). The capitals of these columns represent the planetary development of our solar system. Our Earth is, after all, the fourth embodiment in a planetary developmental system, and in the ways it is configured it points to three future embodiments. (More exact details about this can be found in the articles in this journal headed 'From the Akasha Chronicle'. The seven successive embodiments of the Earth are referred to as the Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan states. In the representations commonly used in esoteric studies, the Vulcan state is omitted as being too far in the future, and for reasons that would take us too far afield to discuss here, the Earth's development is divided into a Martian and a Mercury state. (These reasons can also be found in the essays on the “Akasha Chronicle”. These seven embodiments of the earth: Saturn, Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter and Venus are now expressed in esotericism by seven column capitals. The inner life of each of these states of development is depicted in the forms of these capitals. Here, too, the intention is that one should not delve into the forms of the capitals intellectually, but entirely through the feelings, in a truly artistic experience and in the imagination. For every line, every curve, everything about these forms is such that when you immerse yourself in them, you awaken dormant powers in your soul; and these powers lead to ideas about the great mysteries of the world that underlie the cosmic and related human development of the earth. Anyone who might criticize the design of such columns should consider that the Corinthian and Ionic columns, for example, also emerged from the embodiment of the secrets of existence, and that such facts are only unknown to the materialistic way of thinking of our time. From the way the motives of world development are expressed in these column capitals, one can gauge how esotericism is to have a fruitful effect on art. The ancient columns, too, are born out of esotericism. And the architecture of the future will have to present to people what the esoteric worldview of Theosophy can give as a hint today.

In Munich, for example, an attempt has been made to sketch out an interior in the spirit of the Theosophical worldview; of course, only some of the relevant information could be provided, and even that only in general terms, and above all not in the precise order that would be most appropriate. But the aim was only to evoke a sense of what was important. The esoteric symbolism of the room in which we were meeting also included two columns at the front of the hall. What they signify can be seen from the description of the fourth seal, which also contains the two columns. They point to the mystery of blood and contain the “mystery of human development”. The color of the pillars is connected with the blood secret. One is red; the other is a deep blue-red. Esoteric science writes four deeply significant sayings on these two pillars. When the human soul immerses itself in these four sayings in meditation, then entire secrets of the world and of humanity well up from their depths. Many books would have to be written to exhaust the full meaning of these sayings, for not only is every word significant, but so is the symmetry of the words, the way they are distributed among the four sayings, the intensifications that lie within them, and much more, so that only long, patient devotion to the matter can exhaust what lies within. The four sayings of the “Pillar of Wisdom” in English are:

In pure thought you find
the self that can sustain itself.

When you transform thought into image,
you experience creative wisdom.

If you condense feeling into light,
you reveal the forming power.

If you reify will into being,
you create in the world's being.

We tried to express the fundamental mood that we wanted to express in our “inner space” in the program book that was given to visitors. After the significance of the red color in esoteric symbolism has been discussed above, there is no need to say anything more about the red cover of this book. On this cover (in the upper left corner) there is a black cross entwined with red roses in a blue oval field; to the right of it are the letters: E. D. N. - J. C.M. - P. S. S. R. - These are the ten initial letters of the words by which true Rosicrucianism is summarized in a single sentence: “Ex deo nascimur, in Christo morimur, per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus.” The cross symbol, entwined with roses, expresses the meaning of Rosicrucianism in an esoteric way. In view of the relationship that our event has established with Rosicrucianism through such things, it seems necessary to point out serious misunderstandings that are brought to it. Here and there, people have tried to form an idea of Rosicrucianism based on historical tradition. Of those who have formed an opinion of it in this way, some at present look upon it with a certain benevolence; but most look upon it as charlatanry, enthusiasm or something of that kind, perhaps worse. It may readily be conceded that If Rosicrucianism were what it appears to be to those who know of it only from historical documents and traditions, it would certainly not be worthy of the attention of any rational man. But at the present time no one knows anything about true Rosicrucianism who has not approached it through the medium of occult science. Outside the circle of occult science there are no authentic records of it, for the name stands for the spiritual current mentioned here, which has set the tone in the Occident since the fourteenth century. Only now may we begin to communicate to the public some of the secrets of Rosicrucianism. In drawing from this source in Munich, we naturally did not want to present it as the only true source of the theosophical movement, but only as one of the paths by which spiritual knowledge can be sought. It cannot be said that we gave preferential treatment to this source, while the theosophical movement should take all forms of religion and paths to truth into equal consideration. But it can never be the task of the theosophical movement to study the diversity of religions as an end in itself; it must reach the unity of religions, their core, through their forms; and we did not want to show what Rosicrucianism is, but through Rosicrucianism we wanted to show the perspective to the one core of truth in all religions. And this is precisely the true mission of the Theosophical movement. In the program book one finds five drawings. They are the motifs of the first five of the seven capitals mentioned above, transposed into vignette form. In these five drawings, too, there is something of what is called “occult writing”. Those who immerse themselves in the line forms and figures with all their soul will inwardly perceive something of what are known as the important states for [the] realization of human development (Saturn, Sun, Moon, Mars and Mercury states).

This should describe the intentions of the conference organizers in preparing the framework within which the festivities were to take place. The venue for the event was the Tonhalle (Kaim-Säle), which seemed particularly suitable for this event.

The description of the proceedings of the congress must be preceded by the expression of the deepest satisfaction felt by all the participants at the presence of Mrs. Besant. The much-admired woman had just returned to Europe after spending two years in her field of activity in India; and Munich was the first place where the European members were able to greet her again and hear her powerful speech. The German committee of the Congress had invited Mrs. Besant to preside over the honorary committee; and so the esteemed leader gave the assembly its consecration and lent it the mood that her whole being communicates to all those around her and to whom the magic of her words reaches.

The visit to the congress was a thoroughly satisfying one. We had the great pleasure of welcoming many members of the other European sections, as well as those of the Indian section. The members of the German section were present in large numbers. The British section was officially represented by its General Secretary, Miss Spink; the French section by its General Secretary, Dr. Th. Pascal; the Dutch section by its General Secretary, Mr. Fricke; the Italian section by its General Secretary, Prof. Dr. Penzig; the Scandinavian section by its General Secretary, A. Knös; and the Hungarian section by its General Secretary, D. Nagy.

The opening of the congress took place on May 18 at 10 o'clock in the morning. It began with a musical introduction. Emanuel Nowotny played the Toccata in F major by Johann Sebastian Bach on the organ. - Thereupon the Secretary General of the German Section had to greet the participants on behalf of the German committee. He greeted Mrs. Besant and emphasized the importance of the fact that the Munich Congress was honored by her visit. After welcoming the representatives of the other sections and the German visitors, the speaker expressed words of love, appreciation and thanks for the founder-president H. S. Olcott, who died in February. The extensive mission of the Theosophical movement in the spiritual life of the present day was also pointed out in this opening address, and the necessity emphasized that the cultivation of spiritual life must form the basis of the Theosophical work. After that, the representatives of the European sections and the other fields of work spoke: from England (Mr. Wedgwood), from France (Dr. “Th. Pascal), from the Netherlands (Mr. Fricke), from Italy (Prof. Penzig), from Scandinavia (Mr. A. Knös ), Hungary (Mr. D. Nagy), Bohemia (Mr. Bedrnicek), Russia (Miss Kamensky, Mrs. Forsch, Miss N. v. Gernet), Bulgaria, Belgium (and others).

As at previous congresses, each speaker spoke in their national language.

Mrs. Besant then took the floor to greet the German section and emphasize the nature of the Theosophical movement, as well as to point out in a few forceful sentences the spiritual life and its fundamental importance for society.

The Saturday afternoon was devoted to lectures and talks by Mr. Alan Leo, Dr. Th. Pascal, Michael Bauer, Mr. James Wedgwood and Miss Kamensky. Mr. Alan Leo read his paper on “Astrology and Personal Fate”. The esoteric nature of astrology was discussed and free will was clearly explained in relation to predetermined fate, showing the way in which planetary forces influence human life. Dr. Th. Pascal presented the results of his long inner research in the theosophical field in a thoughtful essay. It was stimulating to follow the subtle arguments of intimate trains of thought. Michael Bauer spoke about the relationship between nature and man. This very meritorious leader of our Nuremberg branch showed in his warm-hearted and spirited way how the inner essence of nature and man's own inner being are interlinked in their depths. Mr. Wedgwood read his paper on “The Value of the Theosophical Society.” He explained how the study of occultism elevates man to an awareness of his higher destiny by giving him a knowledge of his place in the world process. It depends on the perspectives that occultism gives to the human soul. (No summary of the contents of the individual lectures and papers will be given here, as these will appear in detail in the “Congress Yearbook”. Miss Kamensky read her fascinating paper on “Theosophy in Russia” that same afternoon. Her brief but meaningful remarks showed how many Theosophical ideas are to be found in Russian literary and intellectual life. The work was a prime example of how to seek out those seeds in a nation's intellectual life that only require spiritual light in order to grow into Theosophy in the right way.

The first day of the conference ended with an evening of artistic performances. Johann Sebastian Bach's “Prelude and Fugue in B minor”, performed by Emanuel Nowotny on the organ, opened the evening. After that, Marie von Sivers recited the monologue from the beginning of the second part of Goethe's Faust, “Des Lebens Pulse schlagen frisch lebendig...”, as an example of a poem written for esoteric reasons. The two members, Ms. Alice von Sonklar and Ms. Toni Völker, performed Robert Schumann's “Pictures from the East” on the piano, which seem very suitable for promoting a mystical mood. Miss Gertrud Garmatter then sang two songs by Schubert, “An die Musik” and “Die schöne Müllerin”, in her charmingly sensitive way, and Miss Toni Völker concluded the evening with her beautiful artistic performance on the piano: “Pastorale and Capriccio” by Scarlatti.

On Sunday, May 19, the morning session was opened by the atmospheric Trio in E-flat major by Johannes Brahms (1st movement), played by Miss Johanna Fritsch (violin), Marika v. Gumppenberg (piano) and Mr. Tuckermann (French horn). Mrs. Besant then gave her momentous lecture: “The Place of Phenomena in the Theosophical Society”. She explained the role phenomena played in the early days of the Theosophical Society through H. P. Blavatsky, and how important they were in a time of doubt about higher worlds. She emphasized how the observation of phenomena related to higher worlds can never be dangerous if approached with the same spirit of research that is applied to observations in the physical world. She emphasized how little good it would do for the Theosophical Society if, for fear of the danger posed by psychic powers, it abandoned the pursuit of the goal of “studying those forces in the world and in man that are not accessible to sensory observation” to other societies.

It would be quite impossible to convey the manifold content of this lecture within the framework of a short report. Therefore, as with all earlier and later lectures of the congress, reference must be made to the “Yearbook” of the “Federation of European Sections”, which will appear following this lecture.

The second lecture of the morning was Dr. Rudolf Steiner's lecture on “The Initiation of the Rosicrucian”, in which the method of attaining knowledge of supersensible worlds in the sense of esotericism, which has set the tone in the West since the 14th century, is discussed and at the same time the necessity of these methods for the present period of human development is shown.

On Sunday afternoon (5 p.m.), Edouard Schuré's “Sacred Drama of Eleusis” was performed. The German organizers considered this performance to be an especially important part of the congress. It impressively demonstrated how theosophical ideas and sentiments can be expressed in true, high art. Edouard Schuré is the great French artist and writer who, through his works in so many directions, communicates the theosophical spirit to our contemporaries. Schuré's works “Les Grands Initiés” (“The Great Initiates”) and “Sanctuaires d'Orient” (“The Sanctuaries of the Orient”) are completely theosophical in the noblest sense of the word. And Schuré's theosophical way of looking at things is fully transformed into a vital creative power when he works as an artist. Within him lives that relationship between imagination and fantasy on which the basic secret of all high art is based. Edouard Schuré's truly mystical drama “The Children of Lucifer” is a shining example of how a world view striving towards the heights of knowledge can be fully realized in artistic form. Only a mind of this kind could have undertaken what Schuré did, to resurrect the “sacred drama” of Eleusis in the mind and eye of the modern man. This drama leads us to the door of that ancient time, where knowledge, religion and art still lived in one, where imagination was the faithful witness of truth and the sacred guide to piety; and where the reflection of imagination fell on this imagination in a transfiguring and revealing way. In Edouard Schur there lives a modern artistic soul, in which the light of that mysterious time shines, and so he was able to recreate what the priestly sages showed the audience in the “Drama at Eleusis” in Greece's distant past: the deep mystery of the world, which is reflected in the meaningful events of Eros' seduction of Persephone and her abduction by Pluto; of the pain of Demeter and the advice she to go to Eleusis, to seek advice from the “Goddess of Transformations”, Hekate; of Triptolem's initiation by Demeter as a priest in Eleusis; of Triptolem's daring journey into Pluto's realm to free Persephones; and of the emergence of a “new Dionysos”, who arises from Zeus' fire and the light of Demeter through the sacrifice of Triptolem. The congress organizers attempted to present the drama, which was inspired by Schuré, to the visitors in German. This was made possible by the dedicated work of a number of our members and by the beautiful, loving support of Bernhard Stavenhagen, who created a wonderful musical accompaniment to the Schuré drama. Stavenhagen preceded each of the four acts with a musical introduction that atmospherically prepared the audience for the dramatic action. With true congeniality, this important composer has immersed himself in the basic motifs of the mystery and rendered them musically. This musical performance was received with great enthusiasm by the participants of the congress. The willingness of the members of the German Section to work on this performance can be gauged from the fact that all the roles were played by members. Miss Fräulein v. Sivers played Demeter, Miss Sprengel played Persephone, Miss Garmatter played Eros, Mrs. v. Vacano played Hekate, Mr. Stahl played Pluto; we were delighted to have the collaboration of our member, the excellent actor Mr. Jürgas, who created an impressive figure in the role of Triptolemus; Baroness v. Gumppenberg, Dr. Peipers as Zeus, and Miss Wollisch as Dionysus. These are only the main roles; the choruses that are part of the plot were also composed of members. Special recognition must be given to our esteemed member, Mr. Linde, who took on the laborious task of creating the decorations.

The morning of Monday was introduced by the recitation of Goethe's poems “Song of the Spirits over the Waters” and “Prometheus”, by Richard Jürgas, whom the participants now got to know as an excellent reciter, just as they had been introduced to his acting skills the night before. Then the participants had the great joy of hearing the second lecture by Mrs. Besant, in which she spoke about the relationship of the Masters to the Theosophical Society. Drawing from her rich spiritual experience, she described the relationship of great individuals to spiritual progress and the way such individuals participate in the progress of the Theosophical Society. It is also impossible to give a brief overview of the wide-ranging content of this lecture in just a few words. Here too, we must refer you to the publication of the Yearbook. After this lecture, our member Frau Hempel delighted the participants with an excellent display of her vocal art. This was followed by a lecture by Dr. Carl Ungers, who spoke very interestingly about working methods in the theosophical branches and explained the relationship of the non-clairvoyant theosophist to the messages of the clairvoyants, showing how the writing “Theosophy” by Dr. Rudolf Steiner can provide a basis for shaping this relationship in the right way. Later that morning, Mrs. Elise Wolfram gave her lecture on the occult basis of the Siegfried saga. She showed subtly and vividly how the deeper spiritual development of Europe is expressed in the myth, how Germanic and even older mystery wisdom took shape in Siegfried. The lecturer's subtle interpretations were well suited to allowing the audience to enter into the mysterious life of part of the Nibelungen saga.

In the afternoon, Mrs. v. Gumppenberg read Mr. Arvid Knös's essay, “Absolute and Relative Truths”; then Dr. Rudolf Steiner gave his lecture, “Planetary Development and Human Development”. He described the development of the earth through three of its present forms, and then pointed to the connection between the development of the earth and that of man. He also showed how one could know something about the future of development.

The evening was again devoted to purely artistic performances. The Sonata in G minor by L. van Beethoven was performed by Chr. Döbereiner (cello) and Elfriede Schunk (piano). Afterwards, Gertrud Garmatter's excellent vocal performance could be heard again (two songs: “Weylas Gesang” by Hugo Wolf and “Frühlingslaube” by Franz Schubert). This was followed by solos for viola da gamba with piano, firstly “Adagio” by Handel and secondly “Aria con variazione” composed by A. Kühnel in 1695. Both pieces were performed by Chr. Döbereiner (viola da gamba) and Miss Elfriede Schunk (piano). A brilliant performance on the piano by the Italian member Mr. Kirby concluded the evening.

On Tuesday morning, the program began with: “Adagio from the Violin Concerto” by Max Bruch, op. 26, performed by Johanna Fritsch and Pauline Frieß. After that, Mr. Richard Jürgas recited some poems full of intimate feeling and mystical moods by our dear member Mia Holm. The rest of the morning was taken up with a free discussion on the topic: The necessity of cultivating occultism within society. Mr. Jules Ägoston from Budapest, Bernhard Hubo, Ludwig Deinhard, Dr. [Carl] Unger, Michael Bauer, D. Nagy, Mr. Wedgwood, Miss Severs and Mrs. Elise Wolfram took part in the discussion. The discussion was introduced by Jules Ägoston, who emphasized the necessity of maintaining the spiritualist experiment; following on from this, Bernhard Hubo developed a contrary point of view based on his many years of experience; Ludwig Deinhard discussed the necessity of acquainting theosophical circles with scientific experiments to penetrate the deeper foundations of the soul. It is impossible to report here on the rich and varied addresses of the above-mentioned speakers. Nor is it possible to do so with regard to the stimulating points of view that Mr. Nerei from Budapest gave in the afternoon during the discussion on “educational issues”. Following these points of view, Dr. Rudolf Steiner also spoke about education. — Mrs. Douglas-[Sheild] spoke about the relationship between “Theosophy and Christianity”.

The closing act of the congress took place on Tuesday at nine o'clock in the evening. It began with the spirited and heartfelt Adagio in D major by our dear member and head of the Stuttgart lodge I: Adolf Arenson, which was performed by Mr. Arenson himself (piano), Dr. Carl Unger (cello) and Johanna Fritsch (violin). This was followed by: “Tröstung” by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, performed by Hilde Stockmeyer, “Ave verum” by Mozart performed by Gertrud Garmatter, the recitation of a poem by Mrs. Ripper, solos for violin by J. S. Bach, by Johanna Fritsch and Pauline Frieß, and variations on the chorale “Sei gegrüßet, Jesu gütig>, for organ by J. S. Bach, by Emanuel Nowotny. The Congress then drew to a close with short closing addresses by the representatives of the individual sections: Mr. Wallace spoke for the British section, Mlle Aimée Blech (representing Dr. Pascal, who had to leave earlier due to his state of health) for the French section, Mr. Fricke for the Dutch section, and Prof. Dr. Penzig for the Italian section. Mrs. Besant then addressed some deeply moving words to the participants, and finally Dr. Rudolf Steiner gave the closing address, in which he thanked the participants, especially those from foreign sections, for coming, and also expressed his warmest thanks to all those whose dedicated work had made the congress possible.

And these thanks must be expressed to many, especially Miss Sophie Stinde, who, as secretary of the congress, has done tireless and important work; Countess Pauline Kalckreuth, who has worked tirelessly on all the preparatory work and tasks. We have these two to thank above all that we were able to pursue the intentions described above at all, and that we were able to achieve what has been achieved. Adolf Arenson took care of the musical part of the program. Our dear member Clara Rettich devoted herself selflessly to the task of painting the seven apocalyptic seals according to the occult instructions given to her; in the same way, Karl Stahl took on the task of painting the seven pillars in the perimeter of the hall. It is impossible to mention all the numerous workers individually by name. But it should not go unmentioned that dear members had set up a buffet in an adjoining room and did the necessary work, which greatly enhanced the convivial get-together, through which members were to come together.

Dr. Rudolf Steiner was authorized at his request, and indeed unanimously and out of the enthusiasm of the audience, to express the thanks of the congress to Monsieur Edouard Schure, the poet of the “Drama of Eleusis” and Bernhard Stavenhagen, the composer of the musical part.

The sculptures by our highly talented member, the sculptor Dr. Ernst Wagner, who strives for the highest artistic goals, were an excellent artistic presentation for the congress. The sculptures he provided for our exhibition were set up in the area around the main hall, and, for their inwardness, had an atmospheric background in the red wall of the hall. The following works of art were present: Portrait bust, Woman praying, Portrait bust, Relief for a sepulchral chapel, Bust, Sepulchral relief, King's child, Resolution, Sybille, Relief for a sepulchral niche, Portrait bust, Pain, Christ mask, Mask “Death”, Bronze statuette. Besides these works of art, only the interesting symbolic painting “The Great Babylon” by our member Mr. Haß, which was hung above the boardroom, and a carpet by Ms. Lehmann, which showed a fascinating utilization of mystical ideas in the applied arts, and finally a relief depicting Colonel Olcott by M. Gailland, and a sketch “H. P. Blavatsky” by Julia Wesw-Hoffmann.

The exhibition of a series of artworks and reproductions of such artworks that have a special connection to theosophical thought took place in the adjoining room. Here one could see: etchings by Hans Volkert; reproductions of two pictures by Moreau; reproductions of two pictures by Hermann Schmiechen; a statuette “The Master” by [Heyman]; a picture “Out of Deep Distress” by Stockmeyer; reproductions of various pictures by Watts; three reproductions of works by Lionardo; pictures by Kalckreuth the Elder, by Sophie Stinde (landscapes); by Haß (After the Storm, Fairy Tale. The King's Daughter, The Storm Cloud, Five Fir Tree Studies); a reproduction by the painter Knopf.

The next Federation Congress will take place in Budapest in 1909, two years hence, at the kind invitation of our Hungarian members.

The following events also took place after the congress: a public lecture by Mrs. Besant in Munich on “exertion and destiny” on 27 May; two public lectures by Dr. Rudolf Steiner in Munich on “Bible and Wisdom” on 23 and 24 May; and a “Course in Theosophy” based on the Rosicrucian method by Dr. Rudolf Steiner, which began on Wednesday, May 22 and included 14 lectures (lasting until June 8).

Photographs of the seals and pillars described above were provided by our member Mr. Kuhn, and will soon be available from Miss Marie von Sivers (Berlin W, Motzstraße 17).

It should be noted here that the first two yearbooks of the Federation (containing the communications, lectures and papers of the Amsterdam and London congresses) have been published. Those of the third (Paris) and fourth (Munich) congresses will follow shortly. The content of the books will be discussed in detail in the next issue of this journal; however, the importance of the books for every theosophist should be pointed out here, and their purchase is strongly recommended.

A group photograph of the Munich conference participants in the festival hall has been obtained by our member Otto Rietmann and can be obtained from Mr. Otto Rietmann (photographer in St. Gallen, Switzerland, Rorschacherstraße).