Anthroposophical Guidelines

Heavenly History - Mythological History; Earthly History - The Mystery of Golgotha

In the spatial cosmos the universe and the earth’s center stand in opposition. In the universe the stars are, in a sense, “disseminated”. From the earth’s center forces stream out to all directions of the universe.

In the contemporary cosmic epoch, the brilliance of the stars and the earth’s forces can only appear to man as the works of the divine-spiritual Beings with whom he is inwardly united.

But a cosmic epoch once existed when the brilliance of the stars and the earth’s forces were still the direct spiritual revelation of the divine-spiritual Beings. In his dim consciousness man felt the divine-spiritual Beings as being active in his being.

Another epoch ensued. The starry heaven, as a physical entity, separated itself from divine-spiritual activity. What one may call world-spirit and world-body arose. The world-spirit is a multiplicity of divine-spiritual Beings. During the older epoch they worked from the stars’ positions down to the earth. What shone down from the vastness of the universe; what streamed as forces from the earth’s center, were in reality the divine-spiritual Beings’ intelligence and will working on the earth and its humanity.

During the later cosmic epochs - after the [ancient] Saturn and Sun evolutions - the divine-spiritual Beings’ intelligence and will remained ever more spiritually contained within them. Where they were originally actively present became “world-body” - the harmonious configuration of the stars in space. Looking back on these things from a spiritually appropriate worldview, one can say: from the original spirit-body of the world’s creative Beings, the world-spirit and the world-body arose. And the worldbody shows in the configuration and movement of the stars how the intelligence and will of the gods once worked. But at the present cosmic time what was once freely moving divine intelligence and will in the stars has become fixed and subject to laws.

Therefore what today shines down to humanity on earth from the stars is not a direct expression of divine will and intelligence, but an inert symbol of what it once was in the stars. So in the human soul’s admiration for the formations of heaven’s stars one sees a past, but not a contemporary revelation of the gods. But what is “in the past” in the stars’ shining is “contemporary” in the Spirit-World. And Man lives in this “contemporary” World-Spirit.

In respect to the formation of the world, one must look back to an old cosmic epoch in which World-Spirit and World-Body acted as a unity. One must then look at the middle epoch, during which they evolved into a duality. And one must think into the future, the third epoch, in which the World-Spirit will again enfold the World-Body in its actions. For the old epoch, the constellations and the paths of the stars were not to be calculated, for they were the expression of the free intelligence and the free will of divine-spiritual beings. In the future they will again be incalculable.

“Calculation” is only meaningful for the middle cosmic epoch. And as it is for the constellations and the paths of the stars, this also applies to the forces streaming from the earth’s center into space. What comes “from the depths” will be “calculable”. But everything strove from the older cosmic epochs towards the middle ones, in which space and time became “calculable” and divine-spirituality, as the revelation of intelligence and will, had to be sought “behind” the calculable.

Only during this middle epoch were the conditions present in which humanity could advance from a dim consciousness to a clear, free self-awareness and to a free intelligence and will.

A time had to come in which Copernicus and Kepler “calculated” the World-Body. For it was through the cosmic forces which accompanied this moment that human self-awareness had to develop. In the older age, this self-awareness was predisposed; then came a time of such advancement that the universe was “calculated”.

On the earth “history” was acted out. It would never have happened had the universe’s constellations and paths of stars not become “fixed”. In the history of earth’s evolution there exists a mirror image - but a completely transformed one - of what was once “heavenly history”. More ancient peoples are still conscious of this “heavenly history”, and they look to it far more than to “earthly history”. In “earthly history” man’s intelligence and will at first lived in association with the gods’ cosmic divine will and intelligence, then independently.

In “heavenly history” live the intelligence and will of the divine-spiritual Beings directly related to humanity.

Looking back at the spiritual life of peoples in the far-distant past, a consciousness of togetherness and desire for togetherness with the divine-spiritual Beings existed within humanity, to the extent that their history was heavenly history. When they told of their “origins”, they didn’t mean earthly events, but cosmic ones. Even in relation to their own time, it seemed to them that what was happening in the earthly environment was unimportant compared to the cosmic events; and it was these latter to which their attention was directed.

An epoch existed in which man’s consciousness viewed heavenly history in powerful impressions in which the divine-spiritual Beings themselves stood before him. They spoke; and the people heard the speech in dream-inspiration; they revealed their forms; and the people viewed them in dream-imagination.

This “heavenly history”, which filled human souls for a long time, was followed by mythical history, which is often taken today to have been poetic versions. They conjoined heavenly history with earthly history. For example “heroes” appeared, superhuman beings. They were beings who stood higher in evolution than man who, at a certain time, had only developed up to his Sentient-Soul. The “hero” however, had already developed what in man will one day be the Spirit-Self. The “hero” could not directly incorporate within earthly conditions; he could, however, do so by immersing himself in a human soul and thus be capable of acting as a human among humans. These were the “initiates” of ancient times.

The people in the continuing epochs did not actually think of them in this way; rather, the things which occurred between the more spiritually incalculable and the physically calculable world underwent changes. What is certain, however, is that long after conditions had changed, the consciousness of one people or another held fast to a “worldview” which corresponded to a much earlier reality. At first this happened in a way that human consciousness which had not kept up with cosmic events really saw the past. Then came a time when the ability to see faded away and the past was only retained through tradition. Thus during the middle ages an interjection of the heavenly world into the earthly one was still traditionally retained, but no longer seen because the force behind the capacity to see in pictures no longer existed.

And on earth the various peoples evolved in such a way that they held fast to one or another worldview, so that different worldviews existed alongside each other, which in essence were successive ones. But the difference in worldviews was not only due to this, but also because the different peoples, according to their natures, saw different things. The Egyptians saw the world in which there were Beings who prematurely ended their evolution and never became human beings; and they also saw man after his life on earth in all that associated him with those beings. The Chaldean people saw more how outer-earthly spiritual beings - good and evil - entered earthly life in order to be active there.

The very long duration of “heavenly history” was followed by “mythological” history, which was shorter, but compared to later actual “history”, nevertheless lasted for a long time indeed.

As I have already explained, in his consciousness man abandoned with difficulty the old visions in which gods and men were conceived of as acting together. Thus “actual earth science” has existed since the unfolding of the Comprehension or Sensitivity Soul. Man “thought” in the sense of what previously existed. Only when the first germs of the Consciousness Soul evolved did man begin to conceive of “history proper”.

And in what has been detached from divine-spirituality and become human-spiritual history, can be experienced by man as free intelligence and free will. Thus the development of the world in which man is engrossed runs its course between the fully calculable and the activity of free intelligence and free will. The evolution of the world manifests itself in all the intermediate nuances of both.

Man lives his life between birth and death in a way that unfolds in the calculable the physical foundation for the creation of his inner divine-spiritual free incalculability. His life between death and a new birth runs its course in the incalculable - in a way, however, that in the “interior” of his divine-spiritual being the calculable unfolds in thought. By means of this calculability he becomes the architect of his future earthly life. In “history” the calculable exists on earth, in which, however, the incalculable is contained, if only to limited degree.

The Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings oppose the order between the incalculable and the calculable established from the beginning by the divine-spiritual beings united with humanity; they oppose their harmonization through “measurement, number and weight”. Lucifer, by his very nature, cannot integrate anything which is calculable. His ideal is unconditional intelligence and will.

This Luciferic tendency is appropriate to the cosmic order in areas in which free acts should reign. There Lucifer is the justified spiritual helper in human development. Without his help freedom in human divine-spirituality, which is built on the foundation of physical calculability, could not enter. But Lucifer would like to extend this tendency to the entire cosmos. And here his activity comes into conflict with the divine-spiritual order, to which man originally belongs.

This is where Michael enters. He stands with his own being in the incalculable; but he effectuates a balance between the incalculable and the calculable, which he bears within him as the Cosmic Thought that he received from his gods.

The Ahrimanic powers in the world are different. They are the complete opposite of the divine-spiritual Beings with whom man has been bound from the beginning. These divine-spiritual Beings are presently purely spiritual powers, who possess perfectly free intelligence and perfectly free will, but who within this free intelligence and free will conceive the wise insight of the necessity for the calculable, the unfree, as Cosmic Thought - from whose womb man is to develop into a free being. And they are united to all that is calculable, to Cosmic Thought, with love. This loves streams out from them through the universe.

The greedy lust and cold hate of the Ahrimanic powers for everything that promotes freedom is the antithesis of this. Ahriman strives to make everything that he streams out from the earth into universal space a cosmic machine. His ideal is exclusively “measurement, number and weight”. He was called into the cosmos which serves human evolution because it was necessary for “measurement, number and weight”, his field, to unfold.

Only he who understands the world spiritually and physically in all its aspects, truly understands it. This understanding must reach into nature in respect to such powers as the divine-spiritual ones who work with love, and the Ahrimanic ones who work with hate. One must perceive the divine-spiritual Beings’ love active in nature’s cosmic warmth that begins in springtime and increases towards summer; one must be aware of Ahriman’s activity in winter’s gusting frost.

The appearance every year of this divine love is the time of remembrance, for the free element of God entered into the calculable element of earth with Christ. Christ acts in complete freedom in the calculable; he thereby renders harmless what lusts only for the calculable, the Ahrimanic.

The event of Golgotha is the free cosmic deed of love in earthly history; it is only comprehensible by the love which humanity brings to this comprehension.

Goetheanum, Christmas, 1924

140. Cosmic events, in which human evolution is interlinked, and which in human consciousness reflects “history” in a broad sense, is subdivided in the long-lasting heavenly history, the shorter mythological history and in the relatively short earthly history.
141. Presently these cosmic events are segregated into the “incalculable” activity of divine-spiritual beings, who create with free intelligence and will, and the “calculable” occurrence of the world-body.
142. The Luciferic powers stand opposed to the calculability of the world-body; the Ahrimanic powers stand opposed to the creation of free intelligence and free will.
143. The event of Golgotha is a free cosmic deed which descends from Universal Love and can only be grasped through human love.