THE
SPIRITUAL COMMUNION OF MANKIND
Midsummer
and Midwinter Mysteries.
Dornach,
December 23, 1922.
HE
Christmas festival can be the
occasion for comparing the Mystery upon which it is based with
Mysteries that were the outcome of different conditions in the
evolution of humanity. The Christmas Mystery — when it is
conceived as a Mystery — belongs paramountly to Winter. It
arose from conceptions of the spiritual world that had primarily to
do with the link established between man and the scene of his life on
Earth at the beginning of Winter.
When we turn our attention to
Mysteries that were celebrated in certain parts of Asia long before
the founding of Christianity and in which many sublime cosmic
thoughts were given expression, or when we compare the Christmas
festival with Mysteries that were celebrated also in pre-Christian
times, in Middle, Northern and Western Europe, we are struck by the
fact that they were preeminently Summer Mysteries, connected with the
union between man and all that takes place in earthly life during the
time of Summer. To understand the essential meaning of these
Mysteries we must think, first of all, of that part of the evolution
of humanity which preceded the Mystery of Golgotha.
Looking back into very ancient times
we find that the Mysteries were institutions of men still possessed
of the faculty of instinctive clairvoyance. In certain states of
consciousness between those of full sleep and waking, in states where
dreams were expressions of reality, the men belonging to that ancient
humanity were still able to gaze into the spiritual worlds whence the
human being descends into his physical body on the Earth. Every human
being in those times could speak and think about the spiritual
worlds, just as a man today can speak about the ordinary knowledge he
has learnt at school. I have, as you know, often said that what the
men of those olden times beheld of the spiritual-super-sensible world
presented itself to them in pictures — not the pictures of
dreams but somewhat resembling them. Whereas we know quite well that
the pictures in our dreams are woven from our reminiscences, that
they rise up from the organism and, unlike our thoughts, do not
mirror reality, through the very nature of the Imaginations of the
old clairvoyance men knew that they were the expressions — not,
it is true, of any external, material reality nor of any historical
reality, but of a spiritual world lying hidden behind the physical
world. Thus the spiritual world was revealed to men in pictures.
But it must not be imagined that
those men of an earlier epoch had no thoughts. They had thoughts, but
they did not acquire them as man acquires his thoughts today. If a
man of the modern age is to have thoughts, he must exert himself
inwardly; he must elaborate his thoughts by dint of inner effort. A
similar kind of activity was, it is true, exercised by the men of old
in connection with the pictures which mirrored for them a spiritual
form of existence; but the thoughts came with the pictures. One may
well be amazed at the power and brilliance of the thoughts of that
old humanity; but the thoughts were not formulated by dint of effort;
they were received as revelations.
Now just as we today have schools and
colleges, so in those times there were Mysteries-institutions in
which science art and religion were undivided. No distinction was
made between belief and knowledge. Knowledge came in the form of
pictures; but belief was based securely on knowledge.
Nor was any distinction made between
what men fashioned out of various materials into works of art, and
what they acquired as wisdom. Today the distinction is made by
saying: What man acquires in the form of wisdom must be true; but
what he embodies in his materials as a painter, sculptor, or musician
— that is fantasy!
Goethe was really the last survivor
of those who did not hold this view. He regarded as truth both what
he embodied in his materials as an artist and what he took to be
science. The philistinism expression in the distinction between the
artistic and the scientific did not, in fact, appear until
comparatively late, indeed after Goethe's time. Goethe was still
able, when he saw the works of art in Italy, to utter the beautiful
words: “I have the idea that in the creation of their works of
art the Greeks proceeded by the same laws by which Nature herself
creates and of which I am on the track.” In Weimar, before
going to Italy, he and Herder had studied the philosophy of Spinoza
together. Goethe had striven to deepen his realization that all the
beings in man's environment are permeated by the divine-spiritual He
also tried to discover the manifestations of this divine-spiritual in
details, for example in the leaf and flower of the plant. And the way
in which he built up for himself a picture of the plant-form and
animal-form in his botanical and zoological studies was identical as
an activity of soul with the procedure he adopted in his artistic
creations.
Today it is considered unscientific
to speak of one and the same truth in art, in science and in
religion. But as I have said, in those ancient centres of learning
and culture, art, science and religion were one. It was actually the
leaders in these Mysteries who began gradually to separate out
particular thoughts from those that were revealed to men with their
instinctive clairvoyance and to establish a wisdom composed of
thoughts. On all sides we see a wisdom composed of thoughts emerging
in the Mysteries from clairvoyant vision. Whereas the majority of men
were content with pictorial vision, were satisfied to have the
revelation of this spiritual vision presented to them in the form of
myths, fairy-tales and legends by those who were capable of doing so,
the leaders of the Mysteries were working at the development of a
wisdom composed of thoughts. But they were fully aware that this
wisdom was revealed, not acquired by man's own powers.
We must try to transport ourselves
into this quite different attitude of soul. I will put it in the
following way. — When the man of today conceives a thought, he
ascribes it to his own activity of thinking. He forms chains of
thoughts in accordance with rules of logic — which are
themselves the product of his own thinking. The man of olden times
received the thoughts. He paid no heed at all to how the connections
between thoughts should be formulated, for they came to him as
revelations. But this meant that he did not live in his thoughts in
the way we live in ours. We regard our thoughts as the possession of
our soul; we know that we have worked to acquire them. They have, as
it were, been born from our own life of soul, they have arisen out of
ourselves, and we regard them as our property. The man of olden time
could not regard his thoughts in this way. They were illuminations;
they had come to him together with the pictures. And this gave rise
to a very definite feeling and attitude towards the wisdom-filled
thoughts. Man said to himself as he contemplated his thoughts: “A
divine Being from a higher world has descended into me. I partake of
the thoughts which in reality other Beings are thinking —
Beings who are higher than man but who inspire me, who live in me,
who give me these thoughts. I can therefore only regard the thoughts
as having been vouchsafed to me by Grace from above.” It was
because the man of old held this view that he felt the need at
certain seasons to make an offering of these thoughts to the higher
Beings, as it were through his feelings. And this was done in the
Summer Mysteries.
In the Summer the Earth is more given
up to its own environment, to the atmosphere surrounding it. It has
not contracted because of the cold or enveloped itself in a raiment
of snow; it is in perpetual intercourse with its atmospheric
environment. Hence man too is given up to the wide cosmic expanse. In
the Summer he feels himself united with the Upper Gods. And in those
ancient times man waited for the Midsummer season — the time
when the Sun is at the zenith of its power — in order at this
season and in certain places he regarded as sacred, to establish
contact with the Upper Gods. He availed himself of his natural
connection in Summer with the whole etheric environment, in order out
of his deepest feelings to make a sacrificial offering to the Gods
who had revealed their thoughts to him.
The teachers in the Mysteries spoke
to their pupils somewhat as follows. They said: “Every year at
Midsummer, a solemn offering must be made to the Upper Gods in
gratitude for the thoughts they vouchsafe to man. For if this is not
done it is all too easy for the Luciferic powers to invade man's
thinking and he is then permeated by these powers. He can avoid this
if every Summer he is mindful of how the Upper Gods have given him
these thoughts and at the Midsummer season lets his thoughts flow
back again, as it were, to the Gods.” In this way the men of
olden times tried to safeguard themselves from Luciferic influences.
The leaders of the Mysteries called together those who were in a
sense their pupils and in their presence enacted that solemn rite at
the culmination of which the thoughts that had been revealed by the
Upper Gods were now offered up to them in upward-streaming feelings.
The external rite consisted in solemn
words being spoken into rising smoke which was thus set into waves.
This act was merely meant to signify that the offering made by man's
inmost soul to the Upper Gods was being inscribed into an outer
medium — the rising smoke — through form-creating words.
The words of the prayer inscribed into the rising smoke the feelings
which the soul desired to send upwards to the Gods as an offering for
the thoughts they had revealed.
This was the basic mood of soul
underlying the celebration of the Midsummer Mysteries. These
Midsummer festivals had meaning only as long as men received their
thoughts by way of revelation.
But in the centuries immediately
preceding the Mystery of Golgotha — beginning as early as the
8th and 9th centuries B.C. — these
thoughts that were revealed
from above grew dark, and more and more there awakened in man the
faculty to acquire his thoughts through his own efforts. This induced
in him an entirely different mood. Whereas formerly he had felt that
his thoughts were coming to him as it were from the far spaces of the
universe, descending into his inner life, he now began to feel the
thoughts as something unfolding within himself, belonging to him like
the blood in his veins. In olden times, thoughts had been regarded
more as something belonging to man like the breath — the breath
that is received from the surrounding atmosphere and continually
given back again. Just as man regards the air as something which
surrounds him, which he draws into himself but always gives out
again, so did he feel his thoughts as something which he did not draw
into himself but which was received by him through revelation and
must ever and again be given back to the Gods at the time of Midsummer.
The festivals themselves were given a
dramatic form in keeping with this attitude. The leaders of the
Mysteries went to the ceremonies bearing the symbols of wisdom; and
as they conducted the sacrificial rites they divested themselves of
the symbols one by one. Then, when they went away from the
ceremonies, having laid aside the symbols of wisdom, they appeared as
men who must acquire their wisdom again in the course of the year. It
was like a confession on the part of those sages of olden times. When
they had made the solemn offering it was as though they declared to
the masses of those who were their followers: “We have become
nescient again.”
To share in this way in the course
taken by the seasons of the year, entering as Midsummer approaches
into the possession of wisdom, then passing into a state of nescience
(Torheit) before becoming wise again — this was actually felt
by men to be a means of escape from the Luciferic powers. They strove
to participate in the life of the cosmos. As the cosmos lets Winter
alternate with Summer, so did they let the time of wisdom alternate
in themselves with the time of entry into the darkness of ignorance.
Now there were some whose wisdom was
needed all the year round, and who for this reason could not act or
adopt the same procedure as the others. For example, there were
teachers in the Mysteries who practised the art of healing —
for that too was part of the Mysteries. Naturally it would not do for
a doctor to become ignorant in August and September — if I may
use the present names of the months — so these men were allowed
to retain their wisdom, but in return they made the sacrifice of
being only servants in the Mysteries. Those who were the leaders
became ignorant for a certain time every year.
Reminiscences of this have remained
here and there, for example in the figure described by Goethe in his
poem Die Geheimnisse as the ‘Thirteenth,’ the one who was
the leader of the others but was himself in a state of dullness
rather than wisdom.
All these things are evidence that
the attitude towards the guiding wisdom of mankind was entirely
different from what it afterwards became when men began to regard
their thoughts as produced by themselves. Whereas formerly man felt
that wisdom was like the air he breathes, later on he felt that his
thoughts were produced within himself, like the blood. We can
therefore say: In ancient times man felt his thoughts to be like the
air of the breath and in the epoch of the Mystery of Golgotha he
began to feel that they were like the blood within him.
But then man also said to himself:
“What I experience as thought is now no longer heavenly, it is
no longer something that has descended from above. It is something
that arises in the human being himself, something that is earthly.”
— This feeling that the thoughts of men are earthly in origin
was still significantly present at the time of the Mystery of
Golgotha among those who were the late successors of the leaders of
the ancient Mysteries. Those who stood at that time at the height of
cultural life said to themselves: Man can no longer have such
thoughts as had the sages of old, who with their thoughts lived
together with the Gods; he must now develop purely human thoughts.
But these purely human thoughts are in danger of falling prey to the
Ahrimanic powers. The thoughts that were revealed to man from above
were in danger of succumbing to the Luciferic powers; the human
thoughts, the self-produced thoughts, are in danger of succumbing to
the Ahrimanic powers.
Those who were capable of thinking in
this way in the epoch of the Mystery of Golgotha — by the 4th
century, however, the insight was lost — such men experienced
the Mystery of Golgotha as the true redemption of mankind. They said
to themselves: The spiritual Power indwelling the Sun could hitherto
be attained only by superhuman forces. This Power must now be
attained by human faculties, for man's thoughts are now within his
own being. Hence he must inwardly raise these thoughts of his to the
Divine. Now that he is an earthly thinker, he must permeate his
thoughts inwardly with the Divine, and this he can do through uniting
himself in thought and feeling with the Mystery of Golgotha.
This meant that the festival once
celebrated in the Mysteries at Midsummer became a Winter festival. In
Winter, when the earth envelops herself in her raiment of snow and is
no longer in living interchange with the atmosphere around her, man
too is fettered more strongly to the earth; he does not share in the
life of the wide universe but enters into the life that is rooted
beneath the soil of the earth. — But the meaning of this must
be understood.
We can continually be made aware of
how in the earth's environment there is not only that which comes
directly from the Sun but also that which partakes in the life of the
earth beneath the surface of the soil. I have spoken of this before
by referring to some very simple facts. — Those of you who have
lived in the country will know how the peasants dig pits in the earth
during Winter and put their potatoes in them. Down there in the earth
the potatoes last splendidly through the Winter, which would not be
the case if they were simply put in cellars. Why is this? —
Think of an area of the earth's surface. It absorbs the light and
warmth of the Sun that have streamed to it during the Summer. The
light and the warmth sink down, as it were, into the soil of the
earth, so that in Winter the Summer is still there, under the soil.
During Winter it is Summer underneath the surface of the earth. And
it is this Summer under the surface of the earth in Winter time that
enables the roots of the plants to thrive. The seeds become roots and
growth begins. So when we see a plant growing this year it is actually
being enabled to grow by the forces of last year's Sun which
had penetrated into the earth.
When therefore we are looking at the
root of a plant, or even at parts of the leaves, we have before us
what is the previous Summer in the plant. It is only in the blossom
that we have this year's Summer, for the blossom is conjured forth by
the light and warmth of the present year's Sun. In the sprouting and
unfolding of the plant we still have the previous year and the
present year comes to manifestation only in the blossom. Even the
ovary at the centre of the blossom is a product of the Winter —
in reality, that is, of the previous Summer. Only what surrounds
the ovary belongs to the present year. Thus do the seasons
interpenetrate. When the earth dons her Winter raiment of snow,
beneath that raiment is the continuation of Summer. Man does not now
unite himself with the wide expanse but turns his life of soul
inwards, into the interior of the earth. He turns to the Lower Gods.
This was the conception held by men
who were in possession of the heritage of the ancient wisdom at the
time of the Mystery of Golgotha. And it was this that made them
realize: It is in what is united with the earth that we must seek the
power of the Christ, the power of the new wisdom which permeates the
future evolution of the earth. Having passed to the stage of
self-produced thoughts, man felt the need to unite these thoughts
inwardly with the Divine, to permeate them inwardly with the Divine,
in other words, with the Christ Impulse. This he can do at the time
when he is most closely bound to the earth — in deep Winter; he
can do it when the earth shuts herself off from the cosmos. For then
he too is shut off from the cosmos and comes nearest to the God who
descended from those far spaces and united Himself with the earth.
It is a beautiful thought to connect
the Christmas festival with the time when the earth is shut off from
the cosmos, when in the loneliness of earth man seeks to establish
for his self-produced thoughts communion with
divine-spiritual-super-sensible reality, and when, understanding what
this means, he endeavors to protect himself from the Ahrimanic
powers, as in ancient times he protected himself from the Luciferic
powers through the rites of the Midsummer Mysteries.
And as under the guidance of the
teachers in the Mysteries the man of olden time became aware through
the Midsummer festival that his thoughts were fading into a state of
twilight, the man of today who rightly understands the Christmas
Mystery should feel strengthened when at Christmas he steeps himself
in truths such as have now once more been expressed. He should feel
how through developing a true relation to the Mystery of Golgotha,
the thoughts he acquires in the darkness of his inner life can be
illumined. For it is indeed so when he realizes that once in the
course of the earth's evolution the Being who in pre-Christian ages
could only be thought of as united with the Sun, passed into earthly
evolution and together with mankind indwells the earth as a Spiritual
Being. In contrast to the old Midsummer festivals where the aim was
that a man should pass out of himself into the cosmos, the Christmas
festival should be the occasion when man tries to deepen inwardly, to
spiritualize, whatever knowledge he acquires about the great world.
The man of old did not feel that
knowledge was his own possession but that it was a gift bestowed upon
him, and every year he gave it back again. The man of today
necessarily regards his world of thought, his intellectual knowledge,
as his own possession. Therefore he must receive into his heart the
Spirit Being who has united with the Earth; he must link his thoughts
with this Being in order that instead of remaining with his thoughts
in egotistic seclusion, he shall unite these thoughts of his with
that Being of Sun and Earth who fulfilled the Mystery of Golgotha.
In a certain respect the ancient
Mysteries had what might be called an ‘aristocratic’
character. Indeed the principle of aristocracy really had its origin
in those old Mysteries, for it was the priests who enacted the
sacrifice on behalf of all the others.
The Christmas festival has a
‘democratic’ character. What modern men acquire as that
which really makes them man, is their inner store of thoughts. And
the Christmas Mystery is only truly celebrated when the one does not
make the sacrificial offering for another, but when the one shares
with the other a common experience: equality in face of the Sun Being
who came down to the Earth. And in the early period of Christian
evolution — until about the 4th century — it was this
that was felt to be a particularly significant principle of
Christianity. It was not until then that the old forms of the
Egyptian Mysteries were resuscitated and made their way via Rome to
Western Europe, overlaying the original Christianity and shrouding it
in traditions which will have to be superseded if Christianity is to
be rightly understood. For the character with which Christianity was
invested by Rome was essentially that of the old Mysteries. In
accordance with true Christianity, this finding of the
spiritual-super-sensible reality in man must take place at a time not
when he passes out of himself and is given up to the Cosmos, but when
he is firmly within himself. And this is most of all the case when he
is united with the Earth at the time when the Earth herself is shut
off from the cosmic expanse — that is to say, in Midwinter.
I have thus tried to show how it came
about that in the course of the ages the Midsummer festivals in the
Mysteries changed into the Midwinter Christmas Mystery. But this must
be understood in the right sense. By looking back over the evolution
of humanity we can deepen our understanding of what is. presented to
us in the Christmas Mystery. By contrasting it with olden times we
can feel the importance of the fact that man has now to look within
himself for the secrets he once sought to find outside his own being.
It is from this point of view that my
Occult Science
is written. If such a book had been written in ancient
times (then, of course, it would not have been a book but something
different!) the starting-point of the descriptions would have been
the starry heavens. But in the book as it is, the starting-point is
man: contemplation, first of the inner aspect of man's being and
proceeding from there to the universe. The inner core of man's being
is traced through the epochs of Old Saturn, Old Sun, Old Moon, and
extended to the future epochs of the Earth's evolution.
In seeking for knowledge of the world
in ancient times, men started by contemplating the stars; then they
endeavored to apply to the inner constitution of the human, being
what they learned from the stars. For example, they contemplated the
Sun which revealed a very great deal to the Imaginative cognition of
those days. To the orthodox modern scientist the Sun is a ball of gas
— which of course it cannot be for unbiased thought. When the
man of ancient time contemplated the Sun externally, it was to him
the bodily expression of soul-and-spirit, just as the human body is
an expression of soul-and-spirit. Very much was learnt from the Sun.
And when man had read in the Cosmos what the Sun had revealed to him,
he could point to his own heart, and say: Now I understand the nature
of the human heart, for the Sun has revealed it to me! — And
similarly in the other heavenly bodies and constellations, man
discovered the secrets of his organism.
It was not possible to proceed in this way in the book
Occult Science.
Although it is too soon yet for
all the relevant details to have been worked out, the procedure is
that we think, first, of the human being as a whole, with heart,
lungs, and so on, and in understanding the organs individually we
come to understand the universe. We study the human heart, for
example, and what we read there tells us what the Sun is, tells us
something about the nature of the Sun. Thus through the heart we
learn to know the nature of the Sun; that is to say, we proceed from
within outwards. In ancient times it was the other way about: first
of all men learnt to know the nature of the Sun and then they
understood the nature of the human heart. In the modern age we learn
what the heart is, what the lung is ... and so, starting from man, we
learn to know the universe.
The ancients could only give
expression to their awareness of this relation of man to the universe
by looking upwards to the Sun and the starry heavens at the time of
Midsummer, when conditions were the most favorable for feeling their
union with the Cosmos. But if we today would realize with inner
intensity how we can come to know the universe, we must gaze into the
depths of man's inner being. And the right time for this is in
Midwinter, at Christmas.
Try to grasp the full meaning of this
Christmas thought, my dear friends, for there is a real need today to
give life again to old habits such as these. We need, for example, to
be sincere again in our experience of the course of the year. All
that numbers of people know today about Christmas is that it is a
time for giving presents, also — perhaps, a time when in a very
external way, thought is turned to the Mystery of Golgotha!
It is superficialities such as these
that are really to blame for the great calamity into which human
civilization has drifted today. It is there that much of the real
blame must be placed; it lies in the clinging to habits, and in the
unwillingness to realize the necessity of renewal — the need,
for example, to imbue the true Christmas thought, the true Christmas
feeling, with new life.
This impulse of renewal is needed
because we can only become Man again in the true sense by finding the
spiritual part of our being. It is a ‘World-Christmas’
that we need, a birth of spiritual life. Then we shall once again
celebrate Christmas as honest human beings; again there will be
meaning in the fact that at the time when the Earth is shrouded in
her raiment of snow, we try to feel that our world of thought is
permeated with the Christ Impulse — the world of thought which
today is like the blood within us, in contrast to the old world of
thought which was like the breath.
We must learn to live more intensely
with the course of the seasons than is the custom today. About 20
years ago the idea occurred that it would be advantageous to have a
fixed Easter — a festival which is still regulated by the
actual course of time. The idea was that Easter should be fixed
permanently at the beginning of April, so that account books might
not always be thrown into confusion owing to the dates of the
festival varying each year. Even man's experience of the flow of time
was to be drawn into the materialistic trend of evolution. In view of
other things that have happened as well, it would not be surprising
if materialistic thought were ultimately to accept this arrangement.
For example, men begin the year with the present New Year's Day, the
1st of January, in spite of the fact that December (decem) is the
tenth month, and January and February quite obviously belong to the
previous year; so that in reality the new year can begin in March at
the earliest — as indeed was actually the case in Roman times.
But it once pleased a French King (whom even history acknowledges to
have been an imbecile) to begin the year in the middle of the Winter,
on the 1st of January, and humanity has followed suit.
Strong and resolute thoughts are
needed to admit honestly to ourselves that the saving of human
evolution depends upon man allying himself with wisdom. Many things
indicate that he has by no means always done so but has very often
allied himself with ignorance, with nescience. The Christmas thought
must be taken sincerely and honestly, in connection with the Being
who said: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” But
the way to the Truth and to the Life in the Spirit has to be
deliberately sought, and for this it is necessary for modern humanity
to plunge down into the dark depths of midnight in order to find the
light that kindles itself in man.
The old tradition of the first
Christmas Mass being read at midnight is not enough. Man must again
realize in actual experience that what is best and most filled with
light in his nature is born out of the darkness prevailing in him.
The true light is born out of the darkness. And from this
darkness light must be born — not further darkness.
Try to permeate the Christmas thought
with the strength that will come to your souls when you feel with all
intensity that the light of spiritual insight and spiritual vision
must pierce the darkness of knowledge of another kind. Then in the
Holy Night, Christ will be born in the heart of each one of you, and
you will experience together with all mankind, a World-Christmas.
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