The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[ 1 ] Until the ninth century after the Mystery of Golgotha, Man's attitude towards his Thoughts was different from later. He did not have the feeling that he himself was producing the thoughts that lived within his soul. He looked upon them as promptings, instilled into him from a spiritual world. Even when he had thoughts about what he perceived with his senses, these thoughts were to him revelations of the Divinity, speaking to him out of the things of sense.

[ 2 ] Anyone who has spiritual vision understands this feeling. For when a spiritual reality imparts itself to the soul, one never has the feeling: There stands the spiritual perception, and oneself must construct the thoughts with which to comprehend this perception; but one sees the thought along with the perception, given with and contained in it, as objective as the perception itself.

[ 3 ] With the ninth century,…all such dates must of course be taken as giving about the middle of the time: the transition takes place quite gradually,…there awoke in men's souls the light of personal, individual intelligence. Man began to have the feeling: ‘I construct my thoughts.’ And this construction of thoughts became so pre-eminent a feature of the soul's life, that thinkers regarded the essence of the human soul as residing in this, its intelligent behaviour. Until then, people had an imaginative conception of the soul. They looked on her essential being as residing, not in the construction of thoughts, but in her participation in the intelligent, spiritual substance of the world. People thought of the supersensible Spirit-Beings as thinking; and they work into Man; they think into him too. And what thus lives in Man as his part in the supersensible, spiritual world,—this they felt as “Soul.”

[ 4 ] Directly one's views are carried higher, into the spiritual world, one meets with concrete Spiritual Powers in the form of living Beings. To that Power, from whom proceed the Thoughts of things, they gave, in old teachings, the name of Michael. Keeping the name, one may say that it was Michael from whom men once received their thoughts. Michael was regent of the Cosmic Intelligence.—From the time of the ninth century on, men ceased to have a sense that their thoughts were inspired by Michael. Thoughts had fallen from Michael's dominion, and sunk from the spiritual world into the individual souls of men.

[ 5 ] The development of Thought-life was carried on now by men in the human sphere. At first, people were uncertain what these Thoughts were, which they had. This uncertainty runs through the teachings of the Scholastics. They were divided into two schools: Realists and Nominalists. The Realists—with Thomas Aquinas and his circle at their head—still felt the old connection between Thought and Thing, as both belonging together. Accordingly they looked on the thoughts as actual realities, existing in the Things. The thoughts of a man they viewed as a real something flowing from the Things into his soul. The Nominalists had a strong feeling of the fact that the soul makes her own thoughts. They felt thoughts as something purely subjective, which exists in the soul and has nothing whatever to do with the things. In their opinion, thoughts were only the names men made for things. (The Scholastics spoke of ‘Universals,’ not of ‘Thoughts,’ but this does not affect the general principle of their outlook, since thoughts always bear a universal character in regard to the single things.)

[ 6 ] The Realists wanted, one might say, to remain loyal to Michael. Even though the thoughts had fallen from his domain and into that of men, they yet wanted as thinkers to go on serving Michael as Prince of Intelligence in the Cosmos. The Nominalists, in the unconscious part of their souls, completed the falling-away from Michael. They regarded, not Michael, but Man as the owner of thoughts.

[ 7 ] Nominalism spread, and gained increasing hold. And so it went on, until the last third of the nineteenth century. Then came the age, when those who can read the spiritual events taking place in the universe, became aware that Michael had rejoined the stream of intellectual life. He is pursuing a new metamorphosis of his cosmic office. Before, he sent the stream of thoughts from the outer spiritual world into the souls of men. Now, since the last third of the nineteenth century, he seeks to dwell within the human souls, where thoughts are being formed. Before, the human beings who were spiritually akin to Michael watched him perform his works in spirit-regions. Now, they know that they must give him his home in their hearts; now, they dedicate to Michael their own Thought-informed, Thought-sustained spiritual life; now, in free, individual Thought-life, they seek counsel from Michael as to their soul's right path.

[ 8 ] People who in their previous earth-lives were familiar with thought in its inspired form—who were servants, that is, of Michael—felt themselves drawn to this voluntary communion with Michael when they returned to earth-life at the close of the nineteenth century. They looked upon him, who had been their old Thought-Inspirer, as their guide henceforth in the higher form of thinking.

[ 9 ] Those who have eyes for such things could not but be aware of the revolution that took place in respect to men's Thought-life during the last third of the nineteenth century. Before this, Man could only feel the Thoughts arising and taking shape out of his own being. Ever since then, he can rise above his own individual being, he can guide his mind into the realm of the Spirit; and there Michael meets him—Michael who from of old is past master in all Thought-weaving. He frees the thoughts from the region of the head; he opens a free way for them to the heart; he sets free the springs of spiritual fervour from the hearts of men, so that Man may live in full soul's devotion to all that he may learn in the light of Thought.

The Age of Michael has dawned. Hearts are beginning to have Thoughts. The springs of spiritual fervour no longer flow from the darkness only of mystical feeling, but from clear soul-brightness—Thought-informed and Thought-sustained. To understand this, is to receive Michael into the heart. Thoughts which seek today to grasp the Spirit must spring from hearts that throb for Michael, the fiery Thought-King of the Universe.

[ 1 ] The rise of the Michael-Age has succeeded in mankind's evolution to the predominance, on the one hand of the intellectual form of Thought-construction, and on the other, of an external view of the world, paramountly directed to the physical world in its outer, sensible aspect.

[ 2 ] Thought-construction is not in itself, of its own character, a development in the direction of materialism. What in earlier ages had come to Man as though be inspiration—the world of Ideas—became, in the time that preceded the Michael Age, a property of the human soul. The soul no longer receives her Ideas given to her ‘from above’ out of the spiritual fullness of the Cosmos; she fetches them forth actively, out of the inner spiritual life of Man himself. With this, Man becomes ripe for the first time to reflect upon his own individual spirit-being. Previously, he never penetrated to this depth in his own being; he saw in himself, so to speak, a drop, separated out for the span of his earth-life from the sea of cosmic spirit, to re-unite with it again after this earth-life is over.

[ 3 ] This Thought-construction that takes place in Man is a forward step in Man's self-knowledge. Viewed in its supersensible aspect, the matter lies as follows: The spiritual powers whom we may call by the name of ‘Michael,’ ruled Ideas in the spiritual Cosmos. Man realized these Ideas within him, inasmuch as his own soul participated in the life of the Michael-world. This realization of the life of Ideas has now become his own personal concern; and this has brought about a temporary separation of Man from the Michael-world. Along with the inspired thoughts of earlier ages, Man had received at the same time the spiritual substance of the world. Now that this inspiration has ceased, and Man begins of his own action to construct his thoughts, he is thrown back upon the perceptions of his senses to give these thoughts a substance. So that Man at first could not do otherwise than fill his newly acquired inner spiritual life with a material substance. He acquired inner spiritual life with a material substance. He ‘fell’ into the materialist view of things in that same age which carried his own inner spiritual being to a stage higher than those preceding it.

[ 4 ] This is a fact which may easily be misinterpreted. One may look only at the ‘fall’ into Materialism and deplore it accordingly. But whilst the views of this age were thus limited in outlook to the external physical world, there arose within the soul, as a realization of the inner being, a purified, unalloyed and self-sustaining spirit-life of the human mind that must remain no longer an unconscious realization; it must become knowingly aware of its own peculiar character. This means that Michael in Being must enter into the human soul. For a period, Man has taken the matter of the natural world as a filling for his own spirit. He must once again fill it with the spirit-substance of the Cosmos out of his own creative mind.

[ 5 ] Thought-construction lost itself for a while in the material of the Cosmos. It must come to itself once more in the cosmic Spirit. Into the cold and abstract world of Thought may enter warmth and the living fullness of spirit's reality. This announces the dawn of the Michael-Age.

[ 6 ] Only in separation from the living Thought-Reality of the world could there grow up in the human soul the consciousness of Freedom. What came from the heights, had again to be recovered from the depths. Therefore the development of this consciousness of Freedom is involved in its first beginnings with that science of the natural world which is directed solely to the world's external aspect. Whilst inwardly Man was unconsciously developing his spirit to pure clarity of Ideas, outwardly his senses were directed solely to the world of Matter, that left undisturbed the first tender shoots of what was dawning in his soul.

[ 7 ] But into these views of external materiality, there may enter anew a living, inner realization of the spirit in the world, and therewith once more a spiritual view of it. The science of Nature, that has been acquired under the sign of Materialism, may receive a spiritual form of conception in the inner life of the soul. Michael, who once spoke ‘from above,’ may be heard ‘from within,’ where he will make his new abode. In more imaginative language, it may be thus expressed: That Sun-life, which through long ages Man drew from without, from the Cosmos only, will begin to shine within, in the soul. Man will learn to speak of an ‘inner Sun.’ He will know none the less well on this account, that he is a being of the Earth in his life between birth and death; but he will be conscious that his own being is Sun-guided on its earthly travels. He will learn to be aware in truth of a being that lives within him and that sheds a light which lights the life of Earth, but is not lit there. In the first dawn of the Michael Age, it may still seem as though mankind were very far from all this. But ‘in the spirit’ it is not far; it is close at hand; it only needs to be ‘seen.’ That Man's Ideas do not remain merely ‘thinking’ only, but turn in thought to ‘seeing,’ is a fact on which immeasurably much depends.

[ 1 ] The progress of mankind may be traced, from the stage of consciousness where Man still felt himself part of the divine-spiritual order, down to the present one, where he learns to feel himself an individuality, detached from divine-spiritual Being, and able to make use of his own Thoughts. One may trace this from the point of view of mankind, as was done in the previous letter.

[ 2 ] One may also, however, through supersensible vision, sketch a picture of the experiences of Michael and his Company during the same tide of evolution—describe, that is, the same series of facts from the point of view of Michael. This shall now be attempted.

[ 3 ] There is, to begin with, a very early age, in which one can only really speak of what goes on amongst divine-spiritual Beings. It is one series of the actions of gods, with which one has here to do. Gods perform what the impulses of their own individual natures suggest to them. They find their appropriate satisfaction in this activity. And how they are affected by it all, is the sole matter in view. Only in one corner of the field of the Gods' goings, may be seen something that looks like Mankind. Mankind is a part of the Gods' activity.

[ 4 ] There is one spiritual Being, however, who from the very first has turned his eyes upon mankind: this is Michael. He arranges, so to speak, the doings of the Gods, so that Man can exist in a cosmic corner. And his mode of activity in doing this, is analogous to that which displays itself later in Man as Intellect—only that, with him, it is an active stream of force, that flows throughout the Cosmos, introducing order of ideas, and bringing cause to effect in fact. In this force Michael is at work. It is his office to administer the Intellectuality of the Cosmos. He desires further progress, namely, that the force which works as Intelligence throughout the whole Cosmos, should hereafter be concentrated in the individuality of Man. The consequence is that there comes a time in the world's evolution, when the Cosmos no longer lives by its present, but by its past Intelligence, whilst the present Intelligence is in the human stream of evolution.

[ 5 ] Michael wants to keep this Intelligence, that is growing up in mankind, in continuous connection with the divine spiritual Beings.

[ 6 ] To this, however, there is an obstacle. The whole line of evolution traveled through by the Gods, from the point where the intellectual force is set free from their cosmic working, to where it becomes incorporated in Man's nature, lies open as a patent fact in the world. Supposing there to be any beings, possessed of the faculty to see these facts, they could turn them to their own account. And such beings do actually exist—namely the Ahrimanic beings. Their whole form of being predisposes them to absorb into themselves any kind of intelligence that becomes detached from the Gods. They are suited to assimilate into their own being the entire sum of intellectuality of every kind. Thereby they grow to be the greatest, the most comprehensive and most penetrating Intelligences in the whole Cosmos.

[ 7 ] Michael can foresee how Man, as he attains ever more and more to the private use of intelligence, must needs come into contact with these Ahrimanic beings, and may then be tempted into an alliance with them, and so fall their prey. Michael therefore puts the Ahtrimanic Powers beneath his feet, drives them constantly down into deeper regions, below the one where Man is pursuing his development. Michael, with his foot upon the Dragon, thrusting him into the abyss—such is the stupendous picture, as it lives within human consciousness, of these deeds in the supersensible world.

[ 8 ] Evolution moves onward. The Intellectual force, which at first lay wholly within the domain of divine spirituality, now becomes so far detached, as to give soul to the Cosmos. What formerly had shot forth only as beams from the Gods, now shines as revealed glory of the godhead from the world of stars. Before, the world was guided by the Divine Being itself; now, it is guided by the Divine Revelation, which has come to be objective, and behind which the Divine Being is passing through the next stage of its own evolutionary course.

[ 9 ] Here again Michael is regent of the Cosmic Intelligence, inasmuch as this Intelligence flows as an ordering stream of Ideas through all the revelations of the Cosmos.

[ 10 ] The third phase of evolution is a still further detachment of the Cosmic Intelligence from its original source. It is no longer the present order of ideas which now rules the star-worlds as divine revelation; but the stars guide and group themselves in their courses in accordance with the order of ideas which was implanted in them in the past. Michael sees that which was under his sway in the Cosmos—the Intellectuality of the Cosmos—ever more and more taking its way to mankind on earth.

[ 11 ] And Michael sees too that the danger of mankind's falling into the snares of the Ahrimanic Powers is becoming ever greater. For himself, he knows that he will always have Ahriman beneath his feet; but can he do the same for Man?

[ 12 ] He sees the greatest of all events on Earth take place. Out of that realm of which Michael was himself the servant, the Christ-Being descends into the sphere of Earth, that He may be at hand when the power of Intelligence shall have passed completely over to the human individual. For then will come the time when the urge will be strongest in Man, wholly to give himself to that Power, which in every particular and in consummate perfection has made itself the bearer of the intellectual force. But Christ will be at hand. Through His great sacrifice He will live in the same sphere where Ahriman dwells. Man will have the choice between Christ and Ahriman. The world will be able in mankind's evolution to find the way of Christ.

[ 13 ] Such are Michael's experiences with the cosmic regency. In order to remain with that, of which he was regent in the cosmos, he takes the road from the cosmos to mankind. He has been upon the road since the eighth century of Christianity, but only really entered upon his earthly office—into which his cosmic office is transformed—in the last third of the nineteenth century.

[ 14 ] Michael has no power to compel men to anything. For the very fact that Intelligence has passed completely into the domain of human individuality, means, of itself, the end of all compulsion. But in the supersensible world that borders on the physical, Michael can perform before men, in a majestic act of imaginative ritual for their imitation, what he desires to do. There he may display himself in an aura of light, in a spirit-gesture, in which is revealed all the glory and majesty of the past Intelligence of Gods. There he may visibly demonstrate, how this Intelligence of the past is even now, in its effects in the present, truer and lovelier and more virtuous than all that in false, delusive splendour proceeds in the immediate present-day Intelligence from Ahriman. There he may let men see how, for him, Ahriman must always be the baser spirit underneath his feet.

[ 15 ] Those who can look into the supersensible world which lies next to the physical one, see Michael there, even as he is here described, and see what he and his company are trying to do for men. Such people see how in freedom Man is to be guided, by the picture of Michael in the sphere of Ahriman, away from Ahriman to Christ. If, through their own seeing, these people can succeed in opening the hearts and minds of other men as well, so that there may be a group of people who know how Michael is now dwelling amongst men, then mankind will make a beginning towards celebrating the Festival of Michael in its true reality, for in such festivals human souls will waken to life within themselves the power of Michael. Then will Michael be working as an actual power amongst men. Man will be free, and yet in innermost communion with Christ, as he journeys on his spiritual life-way through the Cosmos.

Leading Thoughts

[ 16 ] To awake to a true consciousness of the Michael-Influence in the spiritual complex of the world, is to solve the problem of Human Freedom from its cosmic complexities, so far as its solution is necessary for Man upon Earth.

[ 17 ] For ‘Freedom’ is a fact of direct experience for every man who understands himself in the present period of human evolution. No-one, without denying a patent fact, can venture to say: ‘There is no Freedom.’ Yet one may find a contradiction between the fact thus actually given, and the processes of the Cosmos. The ground of contradiction ceases in contemplation of Michael's mission in the Cosmos.

[ 18 ] In my ‘Philosophy of Freedom’ the freedom of Man's being in the present world-age will be found demonstrated as an actual subject of inner consciousness. In the picture here given of the Michael-Mission, may be found the cosmic arguments for this Freedom's evolution.

[ 1 ] How does Man stand to-day, at his present stage of evolution, with regard to Michael and Michael's Company?

[ 2 ] Man stands over against a world which once was wholly divine, spiritual Being—divine spiritual Being, of which he himself was a living part. The world therefore, in those times when World and Man belonged together, was a world of divine spiritual Being. In a following stage of evolutionary progress, this had ceased. The world was then, the cosmic Revelation of Divine spirit; the Divine Spirit in its essential Being hovered behind the Revelation. Yet still it weaved and lived in this, its revealed glory. A world of stars was there; in their shining and their motion Divine Spirit weaved and lived as revelation. One may say, that in the place of a star's standing, in those days, or in the manner of its moving, might directly be seen the action of Divine Spirit.

[ 3 ] In all that here went on—the manner in which the Divine Spirit wrought within the Cosmos—the life of Man, as he grew up in every way a product of divine-spiritual action in the Cosmos—in all of this, Michael was still in his own element unopposed. He was mediator in the relations of the Divinity to Man.

[ 4 ] Other times came. The star-world ceased to be the immediate and present bearer of the divine-spiritual action. Its life and motion was but the persistent continuation of the same form of action which had once worked within it. Divine Spirit lived no longer in the Cosmos as Revelation, but only as Workings. A marked distinction had now taken place between the Divine-Spiritual and the Cosmic: they had become two against the Ahrimanic Powers, which will save us from falling into their snare.

Michael, from his own fundamental being, remained with the Divine-Spiritual. He endeavoured also to keep Man as close to it as possible. And he continued to do so. It was his purpose to preserve Man from living all too intensely in a world which was only the workings—not the being, and not the revelation—of Divine Spirit.

[ 5 ] Michael accounts it a matter of deepest satisfaction that he has succeeded, through Man, in keeping the star-world still directly connected with the divine-spiritual element, and in the following manner:—When Man has accomplished his life between death and new birth, and is on his way down to take up a new existence upon Earth, he himself endeavours, as he comes down towards this new existence, to establish a harmony between the course of the stars and his own earth-lives. This harmony was a matter of course in times of yore, since Divine Spirit was at work within the stars, and Man’s life had its source in them. To-day, when the stars merely continue in their courses to carry on the Divine Spirit’s workings, this harmony would not exist, unless Man sought for it. Man brings his own divine-spiritual element, that has been conserved from earlier times in him, into relation with the stars, in which the divine-spiritual element only exists as after-effect of an earlier time. Thus a divine element is introduced into Man’s relation with the world, which corresponds to earlier times and yet appears in later ones. That this is so, is the act of Michael; and this act gives him such deep satisfaction, that a great part of his life-element, his life-energy, his radiant, sun-like life-will, lives in this satisfaction.

[ 6 ] To-day, however, when he looks with a spirit’s eye at the earth, he sees there another and essentially different state of things. Man, during his life now in the physical sphere between birth and death, has all round about him a world which is no longer directly even the workings of Divine Spirit, but only something left behind from these workings,—what one can only call the work wrought by Divine Spirit. This wrought work is in its forms altogether of a divinely spiritual kind. The Divinity manifests itself to human perception in the forms, in the natural processes, of this wrought world. But Divinity is no longer within it as a living presence. Nature is this divinely wrought work of the Divinity, and everywhere the moulded likeness of the divine workings.

[ 7 ] In this sun-brightly divine, but not livingly divine world, lies the life of Man. But owing to Michael’s work upon - him, he has conserved as Man his connection with the essential being of Divine Spirit. He lives as a God-pervaded being in a non-God-pervaded world.

[ 8 ] Into this God-voided world, Man will introduce what is in himself—what his own being has come to be in this age.

[ 9 ] Mankind will take its place in a world-evolution, and expand its own form there. The Divine Spirit-Being from which Man first sprang, spread abroad as Man-Being throughout all the worlds, will then have power to fill with light that Cosmos, which now exists only in the wrought likeness of Divine Spirit.

[ 10 ] It will no longer be the same Being, which once was Cosmos, which will then shine forth in light through Man. Divine Spirit, in its passage through Mankind, shall realise a quality of being, which it had not brought to manifestation before.

[ 11 ] Against the progress of evolution in this direction, the Ahrimanic Powers turn all their force. They do not want the Divine-spiritual Powers of its origin to illumine the Universe on its further course. Their aim is that the whole of the new Cosmos should be lit by the cosmic intellectual light which they have absorbed into themselves, and that Man should live on henceforth in this intellectualised and Ahrimanised cosmos.

[ 12 ] In a life of this kind, Man would lose the Christ. For Christ came into the world with an Intellectuality which is in every way the same as it was, when once it lived in the Divine Spirit, when Divine Spirit in Being still informed the Cosmos. If, to-day, we speak in such a manner that our thoughts can also be the Christ’s, then we set something against the Ahrimanic Powers, which will save us from falling into their snare.

[ 13 ] To understand the meaning of the Michael-Mission in the Cosmos, means the ability to speak like this. One must be able in these days to speak about the world of Nature in the way demanded by the present stage of the Spiritual Soul's development. One must be able to make one's mind familiar with the purely scientific, naturalistic mode of thought.

But one must also learn to speak—which means, to feel—about the world of Nature too in a manner befitting the Christ. Not only about redemption from Nature, not only about the soul and things divine, but about the Cosmos, we must learn the Christ-language.

[ 14 ] That our human link with our first divine-spiritual origin may be so preserved, that we may know how rightly to speak the Christ-language about the Cosmos—this is something to which we shall in the end attain, if with inward sincerity of heart we learn to feel and ever more fully enter into all that Michael and Michael's Company are amongst us—in their mission, in all that they perform. For to understand Michael, means, to-day, to find the way to the Logos, as lived by Christ amongst men on earth.

[ 15 ] Anthroposophy sets due value upon all that the naturalistic form of scientific thought has learnt to say about the world during the last four to five hundred years. But Anthroposophy has another language to speak besides this one, about the Being of Man, the Evolution of Man, the Growth of the Cosmos. Anthroposohy would speak the Christ-Michael language.

[ 16 ] For if both languages are spoken, then the continuity will remain unbroken, and evolution will not pass over to Ahriman, before finding again its first, divine, spiritual origin. The language of the natural sciences, by itself alone, in a manner of speech that befits the detachment of the intellectual force from the Divine Spirit of its origin. It may become the language of Ahriman, if Michael's mission be neglected. It will not do so, if, through the might of Michael's great example, the freed and detached intellect comes to itself once more in that Cosmic Intellectual power of the beginning, which, severed from Man, has become objective to him, but which lies at Man's source, and appeared in its living essence in Christ within the realm of human kind, after having left Man for a while, in order that he might unfold his freedom.

Leading Thoughts

[ 17 ] 1. Divine Spirit manifests itself in various ways in the Cosmos, in the following stages: 1. In its own primal and essential Being. 2. In the Revelation of this Being. 3. In its Workings—when the Being withdraws from the Revelation. 4. In its Wrought Work, when in the Universe, as this appears, no longer the Divine itself but only the Forms of the Divine are there.

[ 18 ] 2. Man's present view of the natural world gives him no relation to the Divine but only to this finished Work, wrought by the Divine. The effects communicated to the human soul by this view of the natural world are such that Man may use them, either to ally himself with the Christ-Powers, or with the forces of Ahriman.

[ 19 ] 3. Michael's whole aim and effort is, that the pristine relation to the Cosmos, which has been conserved in Man from the ages of the divine manifestation in Being and Revelation, should by the free effect of Michael's own example, become incorporated in the further human and cosmic evolution. For then the present naturalistic view, which tells only of the Image or empty Form of the Divine, will be able to pass over into a higher view of Nature, more befitting the Spirit. This higher view of Nature will have present existence in Man; but it will be a human after-realization of the God's relation to the Cosmos during the first two stages of cosmic evolution. While giving assent, in this manner, to the view of the natural world which belongs to the Age of Consciousness (Age of the Spiritual Soul), Anthroposophy supplements and completes this view by another—the result of observation with the awakened eye of the Spirit.

[ 1 ] For anyone who has imbued his whole mind, in all sincerity of feeling, with the inner conception of Michael's being, and Michael's acts, there will come also a right understanding of how Man must treat a world, which is neither one of divine Being, nor Revelation, nor Workings, but is the wrought Work of the Gods. To look at this world with knowledge, is to have before one forms, formations, which everywhere tell with a plain voice of the divine, but in which the divine being in its own self-existence is not to be found, if one be led away by no illusions. Nor must one look only at the knowledgeable aspect of the world. True, this reveals most plainly the configuration of the world which surrounds Man to-day. But of more essential importance for everyday life is the feeling, willing and working in a world which may be felt in its formation to be divine, but in which no divine life can actually be experienced. To bring real ethical life into such a world as this, requires those ethical impulses, of which I gave an indication in my ‘Philosophy of Freedom.’

[ 2 ] Amidst this world of past works, for the man of genuine feeling, Michael's being and Michael's present world of action may shed a shining light. Michael does not enter the physical world in a visible appearance. He remains with all his doings in a supersensible region, but one which is just on the borders of the physical world in the present evolutionary phase of the worlds. Thus no possibility can ever occur, that any impressions made on men by Michael's actual being, should lead their views of Nature into fantastic realms, or tempt them to build their practical social and ethical life—within a God-wrought, but not God-actuated world—on the pretense that any other impulses could be at work there, save those of which Man himself must be the ethical and spiritual agent. Whether thinking or willing, men will always have to go into spiritual regions, in order to find Michael.

[ 3 ] This will mean living, spiritually, as follows: the ways of knowledge and of life must be taken, as they are and must be taken since the fifteenth century. But men will hold fast to Michael's revelation; they will let this revelation shine as a light into the thoughts which they receive from Nature; they will carry it as warmth in their hearts, when obliged to lead their lives in accordance with the divinely wrought world of finished Works. They will not then have only in view the observation and living realization of this present world, but another state of the world too, which Michael gives them—one which is past, but which Michael, by his being and his deeds, transfers into the present.

[ 4 ] Were it otherwise—were Michael to work so that he transferred his actions into that physical world which Man, at the present day, must know and experience as such—then Man would learn from the world at the present day, not what actually is in the world, but what was. Wherever this happens, the human soul is led by this illusory reading of the world out of its own reality, that is fitted to it, into a reality of another sort—namely a Luciferic one.

[ 5 ] The way which Michael takes to bring the past as an active force into present human life, is a way that follows the right spiritual lines of cosmic progress, and has in it nothing Luciferic. It is important for the human soul to understand this, and to keep before it a clear conception of the way in which, in Michael's mission, everything Luciferic is avoided.

[ 6 ] This attitude towards the light now dawning on the history of mankind—towards the light of Michael—means also finding the right road to the Christ.

[ 7 ] Michael will give the right orientation when it is a question of the world which lies all about Man and calls on him to know and act in it. The way to Christ must be found within.

[ 8 ] It is quite comprehensible, at a time when the knowledge of Nature has assumed the form given it by the last five hundred years, that the knowledge of the supersensible world should also have become such as mankind to-day make it in their lives. It is necessary that Nature should be so learnt and so lived, that everything is emptied of its Gods. And hence, in the form he has thus given to his relations with Nature, Man fails any longer to find himself.

[ 9 ] That relation of himself to Nature, which is the fitting one for the age, gives Man, inasmuch as he is a supersensible being, nothing whatever as to his own nature and being. Nor does this attitude—if it is all that he looks to—enable him to live, ethically, in a way befitting his manhood.

[ 10 ] Hence the tendency arises, not to let this form of knowledge and of life enter into anything which has to do with Man's supersensible being, or indeed with the supersensible world at all. The latter is made into a field of knowledge, set apart from that which is attainable by human powers of cognition. As against the field of what is knowable, another—extra-scientific, or super-scientific—field is marked off for revelation by Faith.

[ 11 ] But in active contrast to all this, is the pure spiritual efficacy of the Christ. Ever since the Mystery of Golgotha, Christ can be reached by the human soul. And the soul's relation to Him has no need to remain a dim and vague mysticism of feeling; it can be a perfectly concrete relation, one to be realized with all the depth and clearness of the entire man.

[ 12 ] When this is so, then there flows into the human soul, from her life together with the Christ, the knowledge which the soul needs about his own supersensible being. The revelation of faith must then be so embraced, that through it there runs unceasingly the stream of actual, living Christ-experience. The whole of life will thereby receive its christening, when in the Christ is recognized He who gives to the human soul the understanding vision of her own supersensible being.

[ 13 ] Thus may stand side by side, as realization of the inner life, Michael-Realization and Christ Realization. Through Michael, Man will find his right way to the Supersensible in respect to external Nature. The naturalistic conception will then, without suffering any falsification, be able to take its place alongside a spiritually-minded conception of the World and of Man—in so far as Man is a creature of the World.

[ 14 ] Through a right position towards the Christ, that which otherwise could only be received by Man as a traditional revelation by faith, will be learnt by actual experience in the soul's living intercourse with Christ. The inner world of the soul, the life of inner feeling and experience will then be realized as one illumined by the light of the Spirit; the outer world of Nature as a world sustained and carried by the Spirit.

[ 15 ] Were Man to seek to obtain the clue to his own supersensible being, except in the life of communion with Christ, it would lead him away from his own realm of reality and into Ahriman's. Christ bears within Himself the impulses of the human future in the manner that is cosmically justifiable. To unite herself with Him, is for the human soul to receive into her the seeds of her own future as cosmically justified. Other beings, that already present forms which cosmically will only be justifiable for Man in the future are beings that belong to the Ahrimanic sphere. The right form of union with Christ, is at the same time the right form of safeguard against Ahriman.

[ 16 ] Those people who strictly insist on the revelations of Faith being safeguarded against the intrusion of any influences from human powers of Knowledge, are actuated by the unconscious fear that if Man once enters upon this path he will fall under Ahrimanic influences. This must be understood. But it should also be understood, that it is, in reality, to the honour of Christ and to His true recognition, when to Christ and to realization of life with Him is ascribed the gracious inflow of the Spirit into the soul of Man.

[ 17 ] Thus Michael-Realization and Christ-Realization may stand in the future side by side. So will Man find his right way—the way of freedom—between Lucifer, who leads him astray into illusions of thought and life, and Ahriman, who entices him into forms of the future which gratify his pride, but can nevertheless not be his, as yet, in the present.

[ 18 ] To fall a victim to Lucifer's illusions, means, not to be willing to advance to the stage of freedom, but to stop short, as God-Man, at a too early stage in evolution. To fall a victim to Ahriman's enticements, means, not to be willing to wait until the right cosmic moment has come at a definite stage of humanity, but to want to take this stage before its time.

[ 19 ] Michael-Christ will stand in the future as the sign at the head of the way along which Man must travel in order to keep the right cosmic direction between the two Powers, of Lucifer and Ahriman, and so arrive at his World-destination.

Leading Thoughts

[ 20 ] Man journeys on his way through the Cosmos in such a manner that his gazing-backward into the bygone world may be falsified by the impulses of Lucifer, and his thinking-forward into the future may be cheated by the enticements of Ahriman.

[ 21 ] The right position towards Lucifer and his falsities will be found when Man imbues his whole mind, in respect both to knowledge and to life, with a sense of the Being and the Mission of Michael.

[ 22 ] Thereby Man safeguards himself also against Ahriman and his lures. For that spiritual path, by which Michael directs Man's mind into external Nature, leads him to a right position towards Ahriman, because he finds the right realization of life in communion with Christ.

[ 1 ] When one inwardly pursues the course of spiritual life down to Michael's workings at the present day, it becomes possible to obtain a light from spiritual science upon Freedom in its cosmic character.

[ 2 ] This does not apply to my ‘Philosophy of Freedom,’ which is something that proceeds from the purely human powers of cognition themselves, if once they can enter upon the field of the spirit. To arrive at the knowledge there arrived at, requires, so far, no intercourse with beings of other worlds. But the ‘Philosophy of Freedom’ makes—one may say—a good preparation for that other knowledge about freedom which may afterwards be learnt in spiritual intercourse with Michael. [ 3 ] And this is as follows.

[ 4 ] If freedom is really to have life in human actions, that which is performed in freedom's light must be in no way dependent upon the human physical and etheric organization. A ‘free’ performance can proceed from the I alone, and the astral body must also be able to vibrate along with the free action of the I, so as to transmit it to the physical and ether-bodies. This however is only one side of the matter. The other side is the one that becomes clear in connection with Michael's mission. Namely, whatever a man realizes in freedom in his inward life, must again have no sort of action upon his etheric nor physical body. Were it to do so, the man would inevitably be brought completely out of line with all that he has come to be during the different stages of his evolution under the influence of divine-spiritual Being and divine-spiritual Revelation.

[ 5 ] What Man brings to realization in his inward life from all that is the wrought work only of divine spirit round about him, must exert no influence of any but his spiritual part—his I. The only thing that may influence his physical and etheric organism, is what comes through the evolutionary stream, not in his surroundings, but in his own being itself, as the continuation of what had its first beginnings in the being and revelation of divine spirit. But this element in the human being must on no account become involved in its workings with what lives in the element of freedom.

[ 6 ] What alone makes this possible, is that Michael carries over from a very remote past in evolution, something which gives Man a link with that divine-spiritual reality which no longer intervenes, in the present day, in the physical and etheric structures. So that by this means, there grows up in the Michael Mission the basis for an intercourse between Man and the spiritual world, which does not interfere in the workings of Nature.

[ 7 ] It is elevating to watch how, through Michael, Man's being becomes lifted ever higher into the spiritual sphere; whilst what is going on below, unconscious and subconscious, beneath the sphere of freedom, becomes ever more deeply wedded to the world of matter.

[ 8 ] Man will find his relation to world-being growing ever more incomprehensible as time goes on, unless he will consent to recognize his relation, not merely with natural beings and natural processes, but also with things of another kind, such as the Michael Mission. One's relations to the natural world are something that one learns to know as viewed from outside. Relations with the spiritual world proceed from something like an inner conversation with a reality of being, to which one has opened access by one's readiness to view the world in a spiritual aspect.

[ 9 ] For Man, therefore, to carry the impulses of freedom into actual life, he must be in a position to hold aloof from his own being certain affectations of nature that act upon his being from out of the Cosmos, and to keep them from affecting it. This ‘holding aloof’ goes on then in the subconscious, whilst in the consciousness those other forces are at work, which represent the life of the I in freedom.

For the man's inward perception, there is this consciousness of creative freedom. For the spiritual beings connected with Man from other world-spheres it is different. The being from the hierarchy of the Angeloi, whose work it is to conduct the man's identity from one earth-life to another, becomes at once visibly aware that man is repelling cosmic forces which are seeking to continue his development—forces which are seeking to give the necessary physical support to his I-system, as they did previous to the age of Michael.

[ 10 ] Michael, as a being from the hierarchy of the Archangeloi, receives his impressions by aid of the beings from the Angeloi-Hierarchy. He devotes himself to the task of conveying to Man from the spiritual part of the Cosmos, in the manner described, forces which can replace the suppressed forces of his natural existence.

[ 11 ] This he accomplishes by bringing all he does into most perfect unison with the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 12 ] The workings of the Christ in earthly evolution contain the forces which Man needs when he works in freedom, in order to make good the suppressed impulses of Nature. Only, Man must then actually bring his soul into that inner intercourse of life with the Christ, already spoken of in these descriptions of the Michael Mission.

[ 13 ] Man is conscious of being in the midst of a reality, when he stands in the face of the physical Sun, and it gives him warmth and light.

[ 14 ] Even so he must live before the face of the Spiritual Sun, the Christ, who has united His life with the life of Earth; and from this Spiritual Sun he must receive, alive within his soul, what in the spiritual world corresponds to warmth and light.

[ 15 ] He will feel himself filled through and through with ‘spiritual warmth,’ when he realizes the life of the ‘Christ within him.’ And feeling how this warmth flows through him, he will say: This warmth dissolves my human being from bonds with the Cosmos which must not hold it. The divine-spiritual Being of yore led me to regions where it needs must leave me, in order that I might achieve my freedom. But in these regions it has given to me the Christ, that from His forces I may receive as a free man, what the divine-spiritual Being of yore once gave to me by way of Nature—which, in those days, was also the way of the Spirit. To the divine source whence I came, this warmth leads me back once more.

[ 16 ] And as this feeling rises in him, Man's sense of his life in and with the Christ will become one in inner soul-warmth with his sense of real, true manhood. ‘Christ gives me my human being,’—this will be a dominant feeling, breathing, 0pulsing through all the soul. And if this feeling be once there, there will come too that other feeling, where Man feels himself by Christ lifted up above the life of earth, and feels himself one with the stars that environ the earth and with all that may be read in this starry environment of the spiritual and divine.

[ 17 ] So too will it be with the spiritual light. Man can have the full feeling of himself in his own being as a man, when he wakens to the consciousness of himself as a man, when he wakens to the consciousness of himself as a free individual. Nevertheless this is accompanied with a certain darkness. The Divine and spiritual of ancient days no longer shines. In the light which Christ brings to the I of Man, the ancient, primal light is there once more. In such a life in community with Christ, the thought may arise, shedding bliss and brightness like the sun through the whole soul: The divine light of old is there, in all its pristine glory; it shines, though not with the light of Nature. And Man unites himself in the present with the spiritual cosmic Light-Powers of the past, that shone in the times before he was a free individual. In this light he can find the paths which will lead him aright as human being, if he understandingly unites himself in soul with the Michael Mission.

[ 18 ] In the spirit's warmth Man will feel the impulse that can carry him on in such a way into his cosmic future, that he can there remain true to the gifts given him by the divine spirit-beings at his origin—notwithstanding that he has since developed in their worlds to a free individuality. And in the spirit's light he will find the power which will lead him, with open eyes and ever higher and broader consciousness, to that world where he shall find himself again as free Man in the company of the Gods of his first origin.

[ 19 ] To want to remain in the first, original state of existence—to want to keep the original naïve simplicity of divine goodness, of the time when the gods ruled in Man, and to shrink from making use of his freedom,—this leads Man in the present-day world, where everything is disposed for the evolution of his freedom, only in the end to Lucifer, whose aim it is to see the present world repudiated.

[ 20 ] To give himself over to the present state of existence; to admit through all the worlds nothing save the rule of that natural law, accessible to the present-day intellect, to which goodness is a neutral matter; to want to enjoy the use of freedom in the intellect alone; this, in the present-day world—where, while freedom reigns in the upper regions, evolution must be carried further in the deeper regions of the soul—only leads Man in the end to Ahriman, whose aim it is to see the present world transformed entirely into a Cosmos of Intellectual Being.

[ 21 ] In regions such as this, where Man is able to feel that when he turns his eyes upon the outer world they fall spiritually upon Michael, and when he turns them to the inner world of the soul they fall spiritually upon Christ, here he will gather such security of soul and spirit, as shall enable him to travel along that cosmic road, on which without the loss of his first origin he shall find the true and right consummation of his future.

Leading Thoughts

[ 22 ] A free action can only be one in which no process of Nature, in or outside of Man, plays a part.

[ 23 ] The polaric counter-proposition in this: In all free action of human individuality, a process of Nature in man is suppressed, which in an unfree action would be there and would give the man's being the formation cosmically predestined for it.

[ 24 ] This formation of his being, which a man fails to receive by the natural road if in his life and being he follows the course of cosmic evolution through its present and future stages, comes to him by a spiritual road through the union with Michael, whereby he also finds the way to Christ.

[ 1 ] In contemplating the relation between Michael and Ahriman, one is unavoidably led to the question: what position do these two spiritual powers occupy towards one another in the whole cosmic interrelation, inasmuch as both of them are engaged in the evolution of the intellectual forces?

[ 2 ] Michael exercised the power of the intellect throughout the Cosmos in past times. He did so then as servant of the divine spiritual Powers, to whom he himself, as well as Man, owes his origin. And this original relation to the intellectual force it is his will to maintain. When this intellectual force became detached from the divine spiritual powers, to find its way into the mind of the human being, Michael determined forthwith to place himself in a right position towards mankind, so as to establish in Man his own relation with the intellectual force. He purposed however to do this all, as before, solely in accordance with the designs of the divine spiritual powers, and to continue to act as the servant of these powers, with whom he, like Man, is united from his origin. It is his purpose, therefore, that in future the intellectual stream should flow through the hearts of men, yet still as the same force which it was when first it flowed forth from the divine spiritual powers in the beginning.

[ 3 ] With Ahriman it is very different. This being has long since detached himself from the evolutionary stream to which those divine spiritual powers belong, of whom we are speaking. Already, in a remote past, he had set himself up beside them as an independent cosmic power. And now, at the present time, he stands spatially in the same world to which Man belongs, but enters into no combination of forces with the beings who belong by rights to this world. Only, when the intellectual force becomes detached from the divine spiritual beings and passes over to the world of Man, Ahriman finds such an affinity to this intellectual force, that he is able, through it, to unite himself after his own fashion with mankind. For what Man receives at the present time as a gift from the Cosmos, Ahriman united with himself long ago, in remote ages. Ahriman, were he to succeed in his intentions, would make the intellect that mankind has received similar to his own.

[ 4 ] Now Ahriman acquired possession of the intellectual force at a time when he could not convert it into inward life. It remained in his being as a force that has nothing to do with the heart and soul. A chill and frosty, soulless cosmic impulse is the intellectual power as it streams from Ahriman. And the men who are overtaken by this impulse evolve chains of reasoning in which, in merciless and heartless fashion, the logic seems to speak for itself—in reality it is Ahriman, who is speaking through it—and which show no sign of any real, inward connection of the man's heart and soul with what he is thinking and saying and doing.

[ 5 ] Michael has never appropriated the power of intellect to himself. He administers it as a divine spiritual force, feeling himself in union with the divine spiritual powers. And this intellectual force, when Michael wields it, shows itself to be as well capable of being made an expression of the heart and soul, as of the head and mind. For Michael bears within him all the first forces of the Gods of his origin and men's. And therefore nothing of chill frost nor soullessness is by him conveyed into the reasonings of the intellect; but he upholds these reasonings with heart-felt earnestness and warmth of soul.

[ 6 ] And herein too lies the reason why Michael's face and bearing are grave, as he journeys through the Cosmos. To be thus bound up in the inner life with the Intelligence that is the world's substance, means at the same time fulfilling the condition, that one introduce into this Intelligent substance nothing of arbitrary volition, of subjective aims or desires. Else, logical reasoning becomes the arbitrary choice of a single person—instead of being the expression of the Cosmos. Strictly to keep his own being an expression of world-being—whatever of private self may stir within, to keep it within—this Michael regards as his more especial virtue. His mind is bent upon the great cosmic relations; this speaks in his countenance. His will shall go forth to men as a reflection of that which he discerns in the Cosmos; this speaks in his bearing, his gestures. Michael is in all things grave. For gravity in the face of any being is the reflection of the Cosmos in this being; a smiling countenance is the expression of that which shines forth from the being itself into the world.

[ 7 ] One of the Imaginations of Michael is as follows: He reigns through the course of Time, bearing the light of the Cosmos as living being of his being, fashioning the warmth of the Cosmos as revelation of his own being. He wends as one Being like a World—affirming himself inasmuch only as he affirms the World—as though from all stations of the universe guiding forces to the earth below.

[ 8 ] And, in contrast, an Imagination of Ahriman: Ahriman, in his course, from time would wring Space. Around him is darkness, into which he projects the rays of his own light. The more he achieves his ends, the keener grows the frost about him. He moves like a world contracted into one single being—his own; affirming himself only by negating the world; he moves, as though he brought with him uncanny forces from the dark caverns of the earth.

[ 9 ] When Man pursues freedom, but with no leaning towards egoism; when freedom is to him pure love for the action he seeks to perform—then it is possible for him to draw near to Michael. If he seeks freedom in order to afford scope for his egoism; if freedom be to him the pride of feeling that in the action he gives expression to himself, then he is in imminent danger of falling into Ahriman's domain.

[ 10 ] The Imaginations above described shine forth from a man's love towards the action he performs; then it is Michael; or else, from self-love of his own person in the performance: then it is Ahriman.

[ 11 ] When Man, as a free being, feels himself near to Michael, then he is on the way to convey the intellectual power into his ‘whole man.’ He thinks, it is true, with his head; but his heart feels the light or dark of the thinking. Will pours Man's inner being forth in light, when Thoughts flow through the Will with force of purpose. Man grows ever more Man, as he grows to be an expression of the World. He finds himself, not be seeking himself, but by uniting himself to the world with Will in Love.

[ 12 ] When Man, in the enjoyment of his freedom, lets himself be seduced by Ahriman, he becomes caught up into the intellectual process as into a spiritual automatism, in which he is a bit of the machinery, no longer himself. All his thinking becomes an affair of the head; and the head severs the thinking from the life of his own individual heart and individual will, and altogether blots out his own individuality. In making himself an expression of his own separate self, the man becomes ever less and less the expression of his innermost, characteristically human, being. In seeking himself, he loses himself. He withdraws from the world from which he withholds his love. Man realizes himself in truth, only when he loves the world.

[ 13 ] From the picture here drawn, it is plain to see how Michael is men's guide to the Christ. With all the gravity of his being, his bearing, his actions, Michael goes through the world in Love. He who follows Michael, cherishes Love in relations with the outer world. And Love must unfold itself first in relations with the outer world—else it turns to Self-Love.

[ 14 ] But if there be this Love, as cherished in the Michael-mind, the ‘Love for Others’ will be reflected back into the personal Self. The Self will then love, without loving itself. And on the paths of such Love as this, Christ is to be found by the soul of Man. [ 15 ] He who follows Michael, cherishes Love in relations with the outer world, and thereby finds that relation to the inner world of his own soul, which brings him together with Christ.

[ 16 ] The age, now beginning to dawn, requires that men's eyes should be turned to a world which lies, as spiritual world, on the very borders of the seemingly physical one, and in which they may find things such as the Michael Being and the Michael Mission, here described. For that world, which Man paints to himself as a picture of the natural world, from the view he has of the seemingly physical one, is not even that world in which he is immediately living, but one that lies as far below the real world of Man, as the Michael-world lies above it. Only Man does not notice that unconsciously, when he sets out to paint his own world, it is really the picture of another which emerges. In the very painting of this picture, he has already begun to eliminate himself, and to fall into spiritual automatism. Man can only save his manhood, when, over against this picture—which he takes for a view of nature, and where he himself is lost—he sets that other one, which shows Michael as he rides on high, Michael leading the way to Christ.

Leading Thoughts

[ 17 ] Anything which is a working force in the world—as, for instance, the World-Thoughts—is not recognized in its true character and meaning for the world, if one looks only at the force per se, which is working. One must go further, and distinguish the Beings from whom the action of the force proceeds; with the World-Thoughts, for instance, whether it is Michael or Ahriman who brings them into the world and maintains them here.

[ 18 ] The same thing which, proceeding from one Being, may work healthfully and re-creatively because of this particular Being's relation to the world, may have a baneful and destructive action, when it proceeds from a different Being. The World-Thoughts carry Man on towards the future when he receives them from Michael. They lead him away from the future of his own welfare when Ahriman can instill them into him.

[ 19 ] by such reflections one is led more and more to get beyond the view of an indefinite spiritual existence, some pantheistic sea of causation at the base of all things, and to pass on to a view more definite and concrete, that rises to conceptions of the distinct spiritual Beings of the Higher Hierarchies. For, in truth, Reality consists everywhere in forms of living Being; whatever in Reality is not living Being, is action that takes place in the relations of Being to Being. And this action can only be understood when one has sight of the Beings who are acting.

[ 1 ] Michael's intervention in the evolution of the world and of mankind, at the end of the nineteenth century, appears in a remarkable illumination, if we consider the history of spiritual life in the centuries that went before.

[ 2 ] In the early fifteenth century lies the moment from which the epoch of the spiritual Soul first begins.

[ 3 ] Previous to this moment, a great change may be seen taking place in the spiritual life of mankind. One can trace how everywhere, previously, Imaginations played through all men's outlook on the world. Particular persons, it is true, have, before this, already arrived in their soul's life so far as bare ‘concepts.’ But the general soul-life of the majority of mankind goes on in a mutual intermingling of Imaginations and of mental conceptions drawn from the purely physical world. It is so with their conceptions about processes of nature, and also with their conceptions of events in history.

[ 4 ] What spiritual observation can discover in this direction is in every way confirmed by external testimony. A few instances may be mentioned here.

[ 5 ] The tales of historical events, which had lived in the minds and mouths of men during the preceding centuries, began to be written down just before the Age of Consciousness.^t1 And thus we have preserved from that period ‘legends’ and such things, which give a faithful portrayal of the manner in which men pictured ‘history’ to themselves in the times before.

[ 6 ] A beautiful example is the Tale of the Good Gerard, preserved in a poem by Rudolf of Ems, who lived in the first half of the thirteenth century. ‘Good Gerard’ is a rich merchant of Cologne. He sets out on a trading expedition to Russia, Livonia and Prussia, to buy sables. Thence he goes on to Damascus and Nineveh, to procure silks and similar merchandise.

[ 7 ] On the homeward journey he is driven out of his course by a tempest. He is thrown upon a strange shore, where he makes acquaintance with a man who is keeping prisoner certain English knights and also the bride of the English king. Gerard offers him everything that he has gained by trade upon his journey, and receives the prisoners in return. He takes them on board his ship and sets out on his journey home. When the ships come to where the ways part, one way to Gerard's country and the other to England, Gerard dismisses the men-prisoners and sends them on their way to their own country. The king's bride he keeps with him, in the hope that her betrothed, King William, will come and fetch her, as soon as he hears that she is free and where she is dwelling. The bride-queen and the ladies of her company are treated by Gerard with all conceivable kindness. She lives as a well-loved daughter in the house of him who has redeemed her from captivity. A long, long time goes by, without the king's appearing to fetch her. At last, in order to secure the future of his foster daughter, Gerard resolves to marry her to his own son; for it seem reasonable to believe that William is dead. The wedding feast is already in full train, when an unknown pilgrim appears amongst them. It is William. He had been long wandering about, seeking for his betrothed bride. She is restored to him, after Gerard's son has unselfishly resigned her. Both remain for a while still with Gerard; and then he fits out a ship to take them to England. Gerard is the first to be seen and welcomed in England by his former prisoners—all now attained to high dignities, and they at once want to choose him for their king. But he can tell them in reply that he is bringing them their own rightful king and queen. For they too had believed William to be dead, and were about to choose another king to rule the country, where everything had fallen to into confusion during the long time that William had been on his wanderings. The merchant of Cologne rejects everything they offer him in the way of honours and riches; and returns to Cologne, to live again as the simple merchant that he was before.

The story is couched in the form that the Saxon Emperor, Otto the First, journeys to Cologne to make the acquaintance of Good Gerard. For the powerful emperor in much that he has done, has not escaped the temptation of looking for an ‘earthly reward.’ Through acquaintance with Gerard, there is brought keenly home to him, by example, the untold good done by a plain man: The sacrifice of all the merchandise he had acquired, in order to set prisoners free; the restoration of his son's bride to William; and then all that he performs in order to bring William back to England, and so on—without coveting any earthly reward whatever in return, but looking for his reward from the hand of God alone. In the mouths of the people the man goes by the name of ‘the good Gerard.’ The Emperor feels that he has received a powerful spur, religiously and morally, through acquaintance with a man so minded as Gerard.

[ 8 ] This story—of which I have here given the bare outline, so as not merely to allude by name to something little known—shows from one aspect very distinctly what was the constitution of men's souls in the age that preceded the dawning of the Spiritual Soul in human evolution. [ 9 ] Anyone who lets the story, as told by Rudolf of Ems, work within him, can feel what a change has taken place in men's realization of the earthly world since the days when Emperor Otto lives (in the tenth century.)

[ 10 ] Looking thence to the age of the Spiritual Soul, we may see how the world has grown as it were ‘clear’ to the vision of men's souls, in respect of their grasp of physical entities and physical processes. Gerard sails with his ships, so to speak, through a mist. He only knows, each time, one little bit of the world with which he has to do. In Cologne, one learns nothing of what is happening in England; and one must go for years in search of a man who is in Cologne. The life and possessions of such a person as the man on whose shore Gerard is cast on his homeward voyage, first become known to one when Fate carries one directly to the spot. Compared to the perspicuity of the world's circumstances to-day, that of those days is like the difference between gazing over a broad, sunny landscape, and groping in a dense mist.

[ 11 ] With anything that to-day is accounted ‘historic’ the Tale of Good Gerard and the circumstances narrated in it have nothing whatever to do. But all the more do they shew the general tone of feeling and the whole state of mind of the age. And this, not the particular occurrences of the physical world, is depicted in Imaginations.

[ 12 ] The picture so drawn reflects Man's feeling that he is not merely a being who in all his life and actions is simply a link in the chain of events in the physical world, turned men's eyes to the beholding of the spiritual world. They did not see into the length and breadth of physical existence; but all the more they saw into the depths of spiritual existence.

[ 13 ] The tale of Good Gerard shews how the twilight haze which preceded the age of the Spiritual Soul as regards the perspective of the physical world, turned men's eyes to the beholding of the spiritual world. They did not see into the length and breadth of physical existence; but all the more they saw into the depths of spiritual existence.

[ 14 ] But as once it had been, when in their dim dreamlike clairvoyance men had looked into the spiritual world, it was now no more, in the age of which we are speaking. The Imaginations were there, but the apprehension they met with in the human soul was one already strongly tending towards the intellectual form of thought. The result was that people no longer knew how the world which reveals itself in Imaginations is related to the world of outer physical existence. And therefore, to people who adhered with more penetration to the intellectual form of thought, the Imaginations appeared to be free ‘fictions,’ with no actual reality.

[ 15 ] People no longer knew that through Imaginations men look into a world in which they dwell with quite another part of their being than in the physical world. And so, in the descriptions, both worlds are portrayed side by side; and both, from the style of the narration wear such a character, that one might well think that the spiritual events described had taken place alongside the physical ones, as visibly as the physical events themselves.

[ 16 ] Moreover, in many of these stories, the physical events themselves were confounded together. Persons whose lives lay hundreds of years apart appear on the scene as contemporaries. Actual events are transferred to wrong places or wrong times. [ 17 ] Facts of the physical world are looked at by the human soul in a way in which one can only look at things of the spirit, for which time and space have another meaning than they have for physical things. The physical world is described in Imaginations, instead of in thoughts. And, in return, the spiritual world is woven into the story as though one had to do, not with a quite other form of existence, but with a continuation of the physical facts.

[ 18 ] The history which holds solely to physical interpretations of everything, thinks that the old Imaginations from the East, from Greece, etc. were taken over, and woven poetically into the historical material which interested people at the time. In the writings of Isidore of Seville (7^th century A.D.) there was indeed a regular collection of old stories and legendary ‘motifs.’

[ 19 ] But this is a surface view of the matter. It can have a value only for one who has no sense of that other form of human soul-life, which knows itself and its own external existence to be in direct touch with the spiritual world, and feels impelled to express in Imaginations what thus it knows. And if then, instead of the narrator's own ‘Imagination,’ he uses one that has been handed down in history and which he has made his own by familiarity, this is not the essential feature; the essential feature is, that the soul's whole orientation is towards the spiritual world, so that the soul sees her own doings and all the proceedings of Nature interwoven with this spiritual world.

[ 20 ] There is, however, a certain confusion observable in the style of narrative in the period just before the dawn of the Spiritual Soul.

[ 21 ] In this confusion, when viewed with spiritual understandings, may be seen the actions of the Luciferic Powers. [ 22 ] The impulse which makes the soul adopt Imaginations into her personal store of life-experience, corresponds less with the faculties that she possessed in primeval times—through dream-like clairvoyance—and more with those already in existence in the eighth to the fourteenth centuries. These later faculties were already impelling the soul more towards a thinking interpretation of what was perceived through the senses. The soul is placed betwixt the two: betwixt the old orientation—where all turns upon the spiritual world, and the physical world is only seen as in a mist—and the new orientation, where all turns upon physical proceedings, and spiritual vision has grown dim.

[ 23 ] Into this unstable balance in the human soul is thrown the Luciferic influence. The Luciferic Powers want to prevent Man from coming to a complete orientation in the physical world. They want to keep him with his consciousness in spiritual regions that were suited to him in primeval times. They want to keep his dream-like, imaginative world-vision from the influence of that pure thinking which is trained to the understanding of physical existence. They are able indeed, in a wrong way, to keep back his powers of vision from the physical world; but they are not able, in a right way, to keep alive his power of realizing the old Imaginations. And so they leave him musing in Imaginations, without being able quite to transport him in soul into those worlds, where Imaginations have real validity. [ 24 ] The effect of Lucifer's influence, in the first beginning of the Age of the Spiritual Soul, is to transport Man out of the physical world into the supersensible one that lies just on its borders.

[ 25 ] This may be seen clearly illustrated in the Legend of Duke Earnest, which was one of the favourite stories of the Middle Ages, and circulated far and wide:

[ 26 ] Duke Earnest comes into conflict with the Emperor; and the emperor makes war unjustly upon him, to destroy him. To escape these impossible relations with the head of the empire, Duke Earnest sees himself obliged to join the crusade which is on its way to the East. In the various adventures that now befall him before his journey reaches its end, physical things and spiritual things are interwoven in the ‘legendary’ style above described. The duke, for instance, comes on his journey to a race of men with heads like cranes. He is cast with his vessels upon the ‘Magnetic Mountain,’ which attracts all ships by its magnetic power, so that people who come into the neighbourhood of the mountain cannot get away again, but are bound to perish miserably. Duke Earnest and his followers manage to escape by sewing themselves into skins and letting themselves be carried off by griffins, who are used to come down and prey upon the people who have been cast on the Magnetic Mountain. They are carried to a mountain top; and there, whilst the griffins are away, they cut themselves out of the skins and so escape. After further wanderings, they come to a people whose ears are so long that they can wrap them round their whole body like a coat; and then to another race of people with such big feet that when it rains they lie down on the ground and spread their feet over them like umbrellas. They come to a race of dwarfs, a race of giants, and so on. A great deal of this kind comes into the tale, as part of Duke Earnest's adventures upon his crusade. This ‘legend’ does not let one feel—in the way one should, wherever ‘Imaginations’ come in—that here the story is passing into a spiritual sphere, telling in pictures of things that are going on in the astral world and have a connection with the wills and the fate of the people upon earth.

[ 27 ] It is the same with the fine ‘Story of Roland,’ which celebrates Charlemagne's expedition against the heathens of Spain. Here it is even narrated, in analogy with the bible, that in order to enable Charlemagne to reach a desired place the sun stays its course, so that this one day is as long as an ordinary two.

[ 28 ] And, in the Saga of the Niebelung, one can see how the form of the story preserved in Northern countries has maintained the vision of the Spiritual in much greater purity; whereas in Middle Europe the Imaginations have been brought very close to physical life. The form of the Northern legends expresses clearly that the Imaginations have reference to an ‘astral world.’ In its Mid-European form, the ‘Niebelungen Lied,’ the Imaginations glide over into the views of the physical one.

[ 29 ] Those imaginations too, which come into the Legend of Duke Earnest, have in reality to do with experiences that are realised, between the adventures on the physical plane, in an ‘astral world’, to which Man as much belongs as to the physical one.

[ 30 ] All this, examined with the eye of the spirit, shows that the entrance into the Age of Consciousness means growing out of a phase of evolution in which the Luciferic Powers would be victorious over mankind, if the Spiritual Soul with its intellectual power did not bring a new strain of evolution into Mans being. That tendency to take their whole orientation from the spiritual world, by which men are confused and led astray, finds its check in the Spiritual Soul; men's gaze is drawn out into the physical world. All that takes place in this direction helps to withdraw mankind from the bewildering influence of Lucifer.

[ 31 ] In all this, Michael is already working from out of the spiritual world on Man's behalf. From the region above the senses he is preparing his work for later. He gives to mankind impulses which conserve the primeval relation to the divine-spiritual world, without this conservation assuming a Luciferic character.

[ 32 ] Then, in the last third of the nineteenth century, Michael pushes forward, and carries his action—which from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century has gone on preparatorily from the supersensible region—into the physical earth-world itself.

[ 33 ] It was necessary, for a while, that mankind should pursue their spiritual evolution in the direction of freeing themselves from a relation to the spiritual world which was threatening to become impossible. Subsequently, this evolution turned again, through Michael's mission, into paths which bring human progress upon earth once more into a relation with the spiritual world in which Man can find health and wholeness.

[ 34 ] So Michael stands, in his working, between the World-Picture of Lucifer, and the World-Understanding of Ahriman. The World-Picture turns, with Michael, to wisdom of itself as divine World-Working. And in this World-Working lives the care of Christ for mankind, which can thus disclose itself through Michael's World-Revelation to the human heart.

Leading Thoughts

[ 35 ] The dawn of the Age of Consciousness (age of the Spiritual Soul) in the 15^th century is preceded, in the evening of the age of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul, by an enhancement of Luciferic activity, which lasts on for a while into the new period.

[ 36 ] The aim of this Luciferic activity is unrightfully to preserve old forms of mentally picturing the world, and to keep Man back from using the intellect to comprehend the physical life of the world and make himself familiar with it.

[ 37 ] Michael unites himself with Man's activity, in order that the emancipated power of the intellect may abide by its divine, spiritual parentage, not in a Luciferic but in a rightful way.

• t1. Footnote by translator. In this and in several of the following Letters, the phrase ‘Age of Consciousness’ (Bewusstseins-Zeitalter) is often used synonymously with ‘Age of the Consciousness-Soul or spiritual Soul’ (Zeitalter der Bewusstseins-Seele)—compare what is said of this in the Preface.

[ 1 ] At the time during which the Spiritual Soul was making its way into Man's evolution earth, the beings of the spirit-world nearest to earth-life had difficulty in approaching mankind. Events on earth take place in a form which shows that quite peculiar conditions are needed in order to make the way possible from the spirit into the physical life of Man. The very form they take shows on the other hand still, and often in a most illuminating manner, with what energy—where Powers of the Past are active and Powers of the Future beginning to act—one spiritual force strives against another spiritual force, to find entry into mankind's earthly life.

[ 2 ] There begins a war between France and England, which lasts from 1339 to 1453, and for over a hundred years throws everything into confusion. This general confusion, proceeding from a particular spiritual current unfavourable to Man's development, puts hindrances in the way of certain events which would have brought the Spiritual Soul much more rapidly into mankind, had these hindrances not been there. Chaucer (who died 1400 D.C.) founded English literature. If one thinks of all that the founding of this literature has led to, in spiritual consequences for Europe, one cannot but find it significant that such an event could not develop in freedom along its own lines, but must happen amid all the troubles of a war. In addition comes the fact that already before this, namely in 1215 A.D., that tendency of political thought had begun in England, which is to receive its right stamp from the Spiritual Soul. The further developments of this event too lie amid the embarrassment of war.

[ 3 ] We have here to do with a time when those spiritual Powers, who aim at developing Man along the lines on which he was first designed by their superiors in the divine spiritual hierarchy, come face to face with their adversaries of the other side. These adversaries are bent upon diverting Man into other lines than those appointed him from the first. We would then be unable to employ the forces of his origin for his later evolution; his cosmic childhood would bear him no fruits; it would be a part of his being that ever more and more withered away. The result would be that Man might fall a prey to the Luciferic or the Ahrimanic Powers, and his own special and peculiar evolution would be taken from him. Had the adversaries of mankind been able not only to put hindrances in the way, but to carry their efforts to complete success, the entrance of the Spiritual Soul might have been precluded.

[ 4 ] An event which displays with remarkable brightness the intervention of spiritual agencies in earthly affairs, is the part played by Jeanne d'Arc, the Maid of Orleans, and her fate (1412 to 1431). What she does, has its impulses—for herself—deep down in the subconscious underlying grounds of her soul. She follows the blind promptings of the spiritual world. On earth reigns harassing confusion, with the aim of preventing the Age of Consciousness from coming in. Michael must prepare the way from the spiritual world for his later mission. He can do so where he finds human souls to receive his impulses. The Maid is one such soul. He works too—though it be only possible in a lesser degree and less obviously for external historic life—through many other souls besides. In events such as the war between England and France he is matched against his opponent on the Ahrimanic side.

[ 5 ] The opposition that he meets with from the Luciferic adversary during this period, was spoken of in the last contemplation. But this opponent may be seen quite peculiarly at work in the whole course of the events which followed the Maid's appearance on the scene. All that here went on plainly shows that people were at a loss, and no longer knew how to deal with such an intervention of the spiritual world in human affairs—an intervention which could well have been grasped by men's minds and taken up too into their wills during the earlier times when imaginative understanding still existed among them. The earlier attitude towards such interventions had become impossible, since the Intellectual or Mind-Soul had ceased to be active. The attitude befitting the Spiritual Soul had not at that time yet been reached; even to-day it is not yet achieved.

[ 6 ] It came to pass, therefore, that the shaping of Europe at that time was carried out by the spiritual world, without men having any understanding of what was taking place, and without anything which they endeavoured to do having any influence worth mentioning in the process.

[ 7 ] One only need draw a mental picture of what would have happened in the fifteenth century had there been no Maid of Orleans, to recognize at once the importance of this event, in which the spiritual world was the ruling agent. There are people indeed, who try to explain such a phenomenon materialistically. With such people, what makes it impossible to come to any reasonable understanding is that they willfully twist round what is obviously spiritual and give it a materialistic aspect.

[ 8 ] It is plain to see from certain spiritual struggles also, in which men's minds are engaged, that mankind can no longer find their way without much difficulty to the realm of divine spirit, however intently they may seek it. These are difficulties which did not exist in the times when insight could still be procured through Imaginations. Rightly to appreciate what is here meant, one has only to look in a clear light at the persons who stand out as philosophic thinkers. A philosopher cannot be regarded solely with a view to the effect which he has upon his age, and the number of people who have adopted his ideas. He is much rather the expression, the manifestation in person, of his age. What the greater part of mankind carry within them unconsciously as a disposition of soul, as unconscious feelings and life-promptings, the philosopher puts into his ideas. As the thermometer registers the temperature of its surroundings, so he registers the mental condition of his age. The philosophers are as little the cause of the psychology of their age, as the thermometer is of the temperature of its surroundings.

[ 9 ] With this as a premise, let us look at the philosopher René Descartes, whose work lay in the time when the Age of Consciousness was already well begun. (He lived from 1596 to 1650.) The one slender support on which he rests his connection with the spiritual world, is the inner realization: I think: therefore, I am. In the consciousness of Self, the central I, he tries to find Reality—and only so much of it as the Consciousness-Soul (the Spiritual Soul) can tell him. [ 10 ] And on all the other problems of the spirit, he seeks to gain light by the intellectual method, by examining what guarantee the certainty of his own Self-consciousness affords of the certainty of other things. He enquires in every case, in respect of the truths historically transmitted to him: Are they as evident as this ‘I think: therefore, I am.’ If he can affirm this, then he accepts them.

[ 11 ] With such a form of thinking in the human mind, is not the spirit expelled from every kind of view that bears any actual relation to the things of the world? The revelation of the spirit has retired to the one pin-point of support in the consciousness of Self. No other thing, in the immediate form of its appearance, reveals the spirit. Upon what lies outside the consciousness of Self, no light of spirit-revelation can be thrown, save mediately, by the intellect working in the Spiritual Soul.

[ 12 ] The man of this age pours forth, as it were, the still almost empty contents of his Spiritual Soul in intense longing towards the spiritual world: one thin ray of light travels thither.

[ 13 ] The beings of the spirit-world on the immediate borders of the earthly one, and the souls of men upon earth, find it hard to come together. Michael's supersensible preparations for his coming mission are only communicated under the greatest difficulties to the soul of Man.

[ 14 ] We shall better comprehend the peculiar character of the tone of soul that finds its expression in Descartes, if we compare this philosopher with Augustine, who, so far as external formulation, employs the same point of support for his realization of the spiritual world as Descartes does. Only, with Augustine, it is done out of the full imaginative force of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul. (He lived from 354 to 430 A.D.) People find, and rightly, an affinity between Augustine and Descartes. Only the intellect of Augustine is the last remains of the cosmic one, whilst that of Descartes is the intellect that has already begun to make its entry into the individual human soul. Precisely by the road which the human mind has traveled in its searchings from Augustine to Descartes, it may be seen how the cosmic character of the Thought-forces disappears, and how the same thing reappears anew in the soul of Man. Yet at the same time it can be seen, under what difficulties Michael and the soul of Man are able so to meet together that Michael can direct in Man what he once directed in the Cosmos.

[ 15 ] The Luciferic and the Ahrimanic forces are both busily at work to prevent their meeting. The Luciferic forces would only allow those things to come to expansion in Man, which were his in his cosmic childhood. The Ahrimanic forces—as their opponents, but yet in cooperation with them—want to develop those powers only, which are acquired in the later ages of the world, and to let the cosmic childhood wither away.

[ 16 ] Under such circumstances of aggravated difficulty, the souls of men in Europe continued to digest those spiritual impulses which had made their way through the Crusades in the form of old ideas and world-conceptions, from the East into the West. In these ideas the forces of Michael lived with peculiar strength. These world-conceptions were dominated by the cosmic Intelligence, of which Michael was by old spiritual heritage the regent.

[ 17 ] How could these ideas and world-conceptions be taken up by human souls, since between these souls and the forces of the spiritual world there lay a gulf? They fell amidst the first faint beginnings of the Spiritual Soul. On the one hand, they met with the hindrance presented by the still feeble development of the Spiritual Soul; they drowned the voice of the Spiritual Soul—lamed its force. And on the other hand, they no longer met with a consciousness that drew strength from Imagination. The human soul could no longer unite with them in full insight. People took them either quite superficially, or else superstitiously.

[ 18 ] This state of men's minds must be clearly perceived, in order to understand those movements in thought which are associated on the one hand with the names of Wycliffe, Huss etc. and with the designation ‘Rosicrucian’ on the other.

Leading Thoughts

[ 19 ] At the beginning of the Age of Consciousness, the human soul develops her intellectual forces only as yet to a very small extent. There arises a lack of connection between what the soul yearns for in her unconscious, underlying depths, and what can be given her by the forces from the region where Michael is.

[ 20 ] This lack of connection affords the Luciferic Powers an enhanced possibility of detaining Man within the forces of his cosmic childhood, so as to cause his further evolution to take place, not along the paths of those divine, spiritual Powers with whom he was united from the first, but along the paths of Lucifer.

[ 21 ] It further affords an enhanced possibility for the Ahrimanic Powers to cut Man off from the forces of his cosmic childhood, and draw him over into their own realm, for further evolution there.

[ 22 ] Both of these things failed to take place, because the Michael-Forces were nevertheless at work; but the spiritual evolution of mankind had to go on amidst the obstacles arising from these two possibilities, and it thereby became what it has hitherto become.

Continuation of the Second Contemplation: Hindrances and helps to the Michael Forces in the dawning age of the Spiritual Soul.

[ 1 ] The incorporation of the Spiritual Soul also brought about a disturbance throughout the whole of Europe in men's inner relation towards the articles of religious faith and the ritual of worship. This disturbance announces itself unmistakably, at the turn of the eleventh to the twelfth centuries, by the sudden appearance on the scene of Proofs of the Existence of god (in particular with Anselm of Canterbury). The existence of god was to be proved by arguments of reason. Such a desire could only arise when the old method of knowing God—by direct realization through the soul's inherent forces—was already passing away. What one knows by direct living experience, one does not prove by logic.

[ 2 ] The earlier method had been a direct perception by the soul of the life-forms of the individual Intelligences, up to the highest Godhead. The new method now became, to work out intellectually a system of thoughts about the ‘First Causes’ of the universe. For the first method, there had been the powers of Michael in the spiritual region immediately adjoining the earthly one—powers which, behind the thinking-forces directed to the externals of sense, equipped the soul with other faculties, that could behold within the universe the life-forms of Intelligent Being. The second method required that the soul's link with the Michael Powers should be first fully developed.

[ 3 ] What happens in the field of religious worship is that, far and wide, from Wycliffe in England (15^th century) to Huss in Bohemia, over broad ranges of religious life amongst men, a doctrine so central as that of the Sacrament of the Communion begins to waver. In the Sacrament of the Communion, Man could find individual human union with the spirit-world which Christ had opened to him; for therein he could so unite himself with the being of the Christ, that the fact of sensible union was at the same time a spiritual one.

[ 4 ] The consciousness of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul was able to picture such a communion for this Soul still possessed ideas, both of Spirit and of Matter, which were closely akin to each other, so that the one could be conceived passing over into the other—Matter into Spirit. But such ideas must not be intellectual ones, of the kind that demand proofs for the existence of god. They must be such as still have something of Imagination in them; for here can be felt in Matter the active Spirit at work within it, and in the Spirit, the striving after Matter. Ideas of such a kind have the cosmic force of Michael behind them.

[ 5 ] If we only consider how much it was, of which the foundations were shaken in men's minds at that time, how much of all that was involved in their most sacred, innermost life! There were persons, in whom the very essence of the spiritual Soul shot forth its brightest rays, who, by the constitution of their souls, were united to the Michael Forces with a strength which for others would only come centuries later. Individualities such as Huss, Wycliffe and others came on the scenes. Following Michael's voice in their hearts, they used the ripeness of their Spiritual Soul to soar to a comprehension of the profoundest mysteries of religion. The intellectual power, now coming in with the Spiritual soul, must—they felt—be able to bring within the range of their ideas what in ancient times had been sought and reached through Imagination.

[ 6 ] In contrast to all this was the old historic position of the human soul, as traditionally handed down, which throughout large circles of mankind had lost all inner staying power. What is historically known as the Disorder of the Faith, which occupied the great reforming councils in the age when the Spiritual soul first began to be active, is all involved with the life of those human souls who neither as yet felt the Spiritual Soul within them, nor could any longer draw from the traditional life of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul anything to give them inner strength and security.

[ 7 ] Such historic currents of inner human life and feeling as come to light in the Councils of Constance and Bâle, may really be said to shew: above, in the spirit-world, the down-pouring of the cosmic Intellectuality, trying to find its way into Man, and below, in the earthly region, an Intellectual of Mind-Soul which is no longer suited to the times. Between the two hover the Michael Forces, looking back to their past union with the divine spirit-world, and looking down upon the world of Man, once united by the same bond, but which now has passed unavoidably into a sphere where Michael must send his aid from the spirit, but with which he himself must enter into no inner union. In this struggle of Michael's—necessary in the cosmic evolution, yet signifying in the first instance a disturbance of the cosmic balance—are to be found the grounds of all that mankind had to go through at this period, even in respect of their most cherished and sacred truths.

[ 8 ] We look deep into the peculiar characteristics of this age, if we fix our eyes on Cardinal Nicholas Cusanus. (See what is said about him in my ‘Mysticism and Modern Thought.’) The personality of Cusanus is like a monument of his age. Everywhere he seeks to give effect to such views as would rectify the abuses of the physical world, not be combating them in a high-flown spirit of fanaticism, but rather by endeavouring, through sound human sense, to guide what has gone wrong, into the right track again. This is directly observable, if one watches the way in which his influence was exerted at the Council of Bâle, and in general amongst his ecclesiastical community.

[ 9 ] If in this respect Cusanus shows himself all inclined towards the change coming into evolution with the development of the Spiritual Soul, one sees him, on the other hand, displaying views which bear shining witness to the forces of Michael. He translates into his own times the good old Ideas, which once had guided the soul and mind of Man to the evolution of faculties by which he could perceive the living forms of the Intelligences in the Cosmos—in that age, when Michael still was regent of cosmic Intellectuality. The ‘Learned Ignorance’ of which Cusanus speaks, is an active comprehension, which lies above the passive perceptions directed to the world of Sense—a comprehension which carries Thought above and beyond Intellectuality, the common form of ‘Knowing,’ into a region where in Unknowingness or ‘Ignorance,’ but with the vision of living realization, the Spiritual is actually grasped.

[ 10 ] So in this Cardinal of Cusa we have a person who in his own soul-life experiences the disturbance brought by Michael into the cosmic balance, and intuitively tries to do his utmost towards directing this disturbance to the welfare of mankind.

[ 11 ] In between all which thus came, spiritually, to the open surface, there was something else which led a hidden life. There were, here and there, persons who had a sense and understanding for the position held by the Michael Powers in the universe, and who devoted themselves to so training the powers of their own souls, that they could find conscious access to that spiritual region bordering on the earthly one, in which Michael carries on his labours on Man's behalf.

[ 12 ] They sought to quality themselves for this spiritual enterprise by behaving externally, in their daily calling and the general affairs of life, in such a way that their ordinary existence was not distinguishable from that of other people. In this manner-by fulfilling their duties in the normal way, in all love towards the things of earth—they were enabled to apply their inner man freely to the spiritual task above mentioned. What they did in this direction was their own concern and that of those with whom they associated ‘in secret.’ In respect of what occurred on the physical plane, the world was not, to immediate appearance, in any way affected by these spiritual pursuits. And yet it all was necessary, in order to bring human souls into the needful connection with Michael's world. There was no question here of ‘secret societies’ in any bad sense—nothing that haunts the dark because it shuns the light of day. It was a case of people coming together, who in the actual coming together would convince themselves that every one of them had a fitting consciousness of the Michael Mission. Those who are working together in this way, do not then talk of their work before persons who from lack of understanding might only spoil the tasks on which they are engaged. These tasks, as we have seen, belonged to spiritual streams which do not run within the borders of earthly life, but in the neighbouring spirit-world—although they send their impulses across into this earthly life.

[ 13 ] The spiritual work to which allusion is here made is that of men who stand within the physical world, but work in union with beings of the spirit-world—with beings who themselves do not enter the physical world, do not incarnate in it. We here allude to what is referred to in the world at large—in very little accordance with the facts—as the ‘Rosicrucians.’ True Rosicrucianism lies along the same line of actions as that pursued by the Michael Mission. It assisted on earth to prepare the spirit-work of Michael, which it was his will to prepare for a later age.

[ 14 ] What this made possible, we can best estimate from the following considerations.

[ 15 ] The difficulties—impossibilities indeed—which Michael meets with, as already described, in conveying his impulses to the souls of men, are connected with the fact that he himself will not bring his own being into any sort of contact with the physical Present of earth-life. His will is to abide by the same interconnection of forces which existed for spirits of his kind—and also for men—in the Past. Any contact with that element with which Man, being situated in present physical earth-life, of necessity comes in contact could only be felt by Michael as a defilement of his being. Now in ordinary human life, as we know, what the soul realizes in her spiritual life, works on from thence into her physical earth-life; conversely, the physical earth-life reacts upon the other: a reaction which, in particular, finds its expression in a man's tone of mind, and in his inclination towards some particular feature of earthly life. Some such interaction of the two things is more especially the case—as a rule, though not always—with persons in public life. That is why, with many of the reformers, the obstacles to Michael's work were really very great.

[ 16 ] The Rosicrucians overcame this side of the difficulty by carrying on their external life with its earthly duties quite apart from whatever they did in Michael's work. When Michael came with his impulses to the soul of a Rosicrucian and met with what was there prepared for him, he in no way found himself exposed to the danger of coming upon earthly matter. For this was kept at a distance by the very thing which brought the Rosicrucian into union with Michael—the specially prepared constitution of his soul.

[ 17 ] In this manner, Rosicrucian will and purpose made for Michael a road upon earth, by which he could find the way to his own approaching earthly mission.

Leading Thoughts

[ 18 ] At the beginning of the Age of the Spiritual Soul, the emancipated intellectual power in Man begins to busy itself in examining the truths of religious faith and worship. Man's soul-life is thereby inevitably thrown into uncertainty. Essential realities which men had formerly realized in the inner life of the soul, they now seek to prove logically. Contents of religious ritual, which should be grasped in Imaginations, they now try to grasp by logical deduction—and even to determine the forms accordingly.

[ 19 ] This is all connected with the fact, that Michael under all circumstances is resolved to avoid every contact with the present earth-world, on which Man is obliged to set foot; but that nevertheless Michael has to remain with the stream of Cosmic Intellectuality, of which he was regent in the past, and to conduct it further within Man. Hereby there arises through the Michael Forces—necessarily for the progress of human evolution—a disturbance of the cosmic equilibrium.

[ 20 ] The difficulty of Michael's mission is lightened by certain persons—the genuine Rosicrucians—who so arrange their external way of life on earth that it exerts no sort of influence upon the inner life of their souls. By this means they are able, in their inner-life, to develop forces by which they can work with Michael in the spiritual field, without Michael's incurring the danger of becoming involved with the present doings of earth-life—which, for him, would be impossible.