The
European Mysteries and Their Initiates
Berlin, 6th May, 1909
In
the last talk I referred to the fact that in the old times of
European development with the different peoples a kind of old,
original clairvoyance existed, and that the present
consciousness has developed only from this former state of
consciousness, from an old, clairvoyant ability. I have shown
that what the old clairvoyant could perceive in certain
conditions of his life is reflected in the legends and myths
that deal with beings like albs, elves, dwarves, and lurs.
These legends and myths are of a manifold kind. If we only
surveyed what has remained in such myths coming from old,
clairvoyant observations and legends in Europe, indeed, certain
resemblances could be observed in all these traditions, but
also again big differences because the clairvoyant abilities of
the single human beings were very different.
A
much bigger correspondence exists in the big myths, in the big
legends of gods and heroes. In addition, these legends lead
back to clairvoyant abilities, only in another way. They do not
go back to experiences that the human being could attain by
natural clairvoyant talent, but the big uniform legends, which
we summarise as mythology, lead back to those experiences that
the initiates had in the mysteries. There are a few
preconditions in our educational consciousness to create a
concept of mysteries and initiates. Because our external
education, our external knowledge is far away from the being of
initiation. If one wanted to characterise both with concepts
usual in our time, one would have to say, the mysteries are
schools in which abilities are fostered in the human soul by
which the soul is led to own observing in the spiritual worlds.
In particular, mysteries are such schools that give
instructions in a quite methodical, systematic way to the human
being who is ripe to get instructions so that his soul is
transformed in such a way that he can perceive the higher
worlds with spiritual eyes and ears. Although the modern
education knows a little about the mysteries, which exist even
today, nevertheless, they exist and lead up to the spiritual
worlds. All contents of spiritual science are contents of
mystery wisdom. He who trains his soul appropriately to observe
in higher worlds is an initiate.
Such sites in which one attains the ability of the
full-conscious clairvoyance always existed. I want to give aA
sketchy overview about the European mysteries today. There we
must go back to ancient times, which preceded Christianity, and
try to imagine what has been done in the initiation schools or
secret schools and what was imparted to the common culture.
I
have often shown how the human being can start the way of
initiation, how thinking, feeling and willing are trained to be
able to start the “way to the mothers.” The
students of all mysteries had to start this way to the
mothers.
We
had European mysteries of great significance and deep influence
on the ancient European culture in different areas of France,
Germany, and Britain. In all these areas, they were of a
particular kind. The starting point was a certain knowledge as
I suggested in the talk about Isis and Madonna. I pointed there
to the fact that the human being has a spiritual origin, that
he once lived in spiritual worlds, that the human soul and
spirit are born out of the spiritual primeval worlds. I have
pointed to the fact that the human being still feels with a
deeper look into his soul that he has a last remainder of his
former being in the spiritual world if he rises above the
physical observation. This last remainder, the human soul, is
enclosed in the physical body, which is a consolidation of the
spiritual primeval being. The human being says about this
enclosed soul and spirit: this shows me how I was once as a
whole, how the ego was born out of the whole universe. Today,
the universe appears to the external reason in all that spreads
out before the senses; but behind all that is the spiritual
universe. This is the primordial father or the primordial
mother out of whom the soul is born that retains the forms even
today, which also the body had at that time.
The
body is also born out of the spiritual universe; it also had a
spiritual figure. What shows the true figure of the human being
is hidden today. As a concealed part of the visible human
being, one also considered the human being in these old
European mysteries. One saw in it an Isis who looks for that
from which she has emerged. Initiation made the human being
experience all procedures by which the human soul again could
behold where from it is born. That means initiation develops
the ability of the soul with which it can reunify itself with
the spiritual primal ground. It is irrelevant whether in the
deepness of a holy grove or in special mystery sites,
everywhere the candidate was brought in such situations by
which he could find the connection with the spiritual primal
grounds of the human being.
One
called what is hidden behind the sensory world like the sun
behind the clouds the concealed spiritual beings
“Hu;” “Ceridwen” was the searching
soul. All procedures of initiation were in such a way that to
the student was shown: death is a process in life like other
processes also. It changes nothing in the inner life core of
the human being. Where the druidic mysteries survived by name
— druid means initiate of the third degree -, the
neophyte was brought into a condition similar to death, so that
he perceived nothing with the senses. His reason was quiet. Who
lives only in his body and can only perceive with his physical
mind whose tool is the brain has no consciousness in such a
condition where the senses are quiet. Just this is initiation
that the senses, the feeling, hearing and so on are quiet, and
that still, even if the brain is quiet, the student has
experiences and makes observations. One called that which does
observations there in us the soul, Ceridwen. One called Hu what
faced it as the external eye and ear face light and tone, the
world of the spiritual facts. The initiates experienced the
marriage of Ceridwen and Hu.
Such experiences are described in the myths. If to us is told
that the ancestors had revered a god Hu and a goddess Ceridwen,
it is only a paraphrase of initiation. This is the reason of
the real myth. It is only empty rhetoricalness if one says,
such myths have astronomical meaning, and Ceridwen is the moon
and Hu the sun. Such myths could only originate because one was
aware of an internal coherence between the soul which rises and
the spirit of the sun, not of the physical sun. The mysteries
of Hu and Ceridwen were those into which the human beings were
initiated in these areas.
More in the north, in Scandinavia and in northern Russia, we
find the drotten mysteries, founded by the original initiate
Sieg, Siegfried, or Sigge. All legends about Siegfried go back
to him. Just in these mysteries we see something that forms the
basis of all mysteries that appears here, however, especially
clear first. We want to ascend from a comparison to the real
fact. To make that clear to us, we start from the human being
as he faces us in life, with head, hands, and feet and so on.
If we assume one of these organs away, the human being can no
longer be a complete human being. We take the most important
organs: heart, stomach, which have to contribute a certain part
to the human life and do their service. It is only possible by
the co-operation of these organs that in the human body a soul
lives and develops. The soul lives in a physical body that is
an assembly of many parts. From it we obtain the view that
everywhere where the human soul or a higher being should live
single parts must co-operate which must do their service. That
is why we find the view in the Nordic mysteries that one can
express this within the human world that one can establish an
assembly of human beings, so that every single one takes over a
certain task. For example, a person assumes the task to develop
the ability of thinking, another the feeling force, a third one
the willpower particularly. Subdivisions are also again
possible here.
One
assumed now that — if one gathers a circle of human
beings in which everyone takes over a particular task, and who,
nevertheless, co-operate in the whole — that then
something invisible works in them like the soul in the human
being. If the human beings assemble that way and everybody does
its task, then they establish something like a higher organism,
a higher body, and thereby they enable a higher spiritual being
to live among them. Sieg established such a circle of twelve
human beings of whom everybody developed his soul particularly.
If these all co-operated, if everything flowed together at
their holy assemblies, then they realised that among them a
higher spiritual being lived like the soul in the human body,
that the souls are the members of a higher body. The thirteenth
lived among the twelve. They knew: we are twelve, and among us,
the thirteenth lives. Alternatively, one took a thirteenth who
represented the centre of attraction in the circle of the
twelve for that which should descend. That means this
thirteenth was the deputy of the godhead in the mystery sites.
Because everything was related to the holy triad, one called
that, who combined the being of the triad, the representative
of the holy triad, and round him were the twelve who had
particular functions like the limbs of an organism.
They were clear in their mind: if twelve human beings were
combined who developed the force in themselves to have
something higher among themselves, then one rose from the
physical to the spiritual world; one rose to the god. They
considered themselves as twelve attributes, twelve qualities of
the god. All that was reflected as twelve Germanic gods in the
Nordic legends of gods. He who wanted to be a member in this
august circle had the task to look for Baldr. This was the
initiation. Who was Baldr in reality? Baldr is the spiritual
part of the human being. Who has killed Baldr? Those have
killed Baldr who have killed the human clairvoyance, who have
joined the physical, who have given the human being the
sensuous vision, who could abuse the physical too fast: Loki,
the fire power, and its expression Hodur (Höϑr, Hod, Hoder), the blind, that
shows the human sensuousness that is incapable to behold into
the higher, the spiritual world. This is the expression of the
procedures during initiation, which the neophyte experienced.
Sensuousness has made the human being blind; by initiation, he
finds the access to the higher worlds again. Thus, the trained
clairvoyance of the initiates towered above the general old
clairvoyance. From druidic and drotten mysteries the European
culture has originated in the pre-Christian age.
Of
course, the personality conscious that develops here is also a
danger. It is a much bigger danger than in other areas. The
personality consciousness forms an undertone of all cultures in
Europe. More than in the East, where the human being devoted
himself with pleasure to Brahman, the personality consciousness
existed in Germanic countries. The danger was obvious because
those who were initiated could misunderstand, misuse very fast
what was offered to them in the initiation so that they
represented it in caricatures and distorted pictures.
Initiation also leads to the handling of spiritual forces. He
who learns to use them learns easily to misuse them. Hence, it
occurred that the mysteries of old Europe easily went to ruin,
that the initiates proved to be not ripe and caused multiple
horrors, so that they became the loathing of the people in many
areas. Various things, which one tells about the mysteries
today, refer to the decay of the mysteries, even if not
everything. The fact that the mysteries can be often
misunderstood does not need to astonish the modern human being
so much. If none can get to know by spiritual science what was
done in the mysteries, but if he can only accept what was
written down later, that world-historical gossip and
tittle-tattle, can get to the wildest views about the mysteries
in the course of times. Think only that somebody is
in a bad way if he wants to inform himself about anthroposophy
and the anthroposophic movement by that what is informed
outdoors: he would get a nice picture! If one kept what one
tells today, something much worse would result than that about
the mysteries.
It
would be a nice task to lead back various things from the
European world of legends to the events in the mysteries. We
would come to the legends of the Nibelungs and Siegfried and
find many things that one has to lead back to the old
mysteries. However, you are not allowed to deduce. The only
thing that decides whether a feature is dreamt up or goes back
to the mysteries can only be just the knowledge of the
mysteries and the ability to pursue these matters up to the
mysteries.
In
all these mysteries wherever we investigate them, a feature
prevails that one could call a tragic one. One may express it
in such a way: indeed, the initiate of the old druidic or
drotten mysteries could get to the union with Hu or Baldr, but
this spiritual world did not appear to him as the highest.
Something else had to be above it. Alternatively, popularly
expressed: our gods to whom we rise are mortal, are doomed.
Hence, the myth of the twilight of the gods, the tragic
prophecy of the doom of gods.
The
strong Christ impulse occurred that could work stronger here
than somewhere else, the message that the highest spiritual,
the Christ principle, has lived in an earthly body among human
beings. Everything that one could experience in the mysteries
became historical fact. In the old mysteries, the initiate was
not completely victorious over death. However, the great
Mystery of Golgotha faced him. Just within the European
mysteries, this historical mystery was accepted with the
deepest understanding, different from somewhere else. A mood
prevailed there which can be expressed possibly as follows. The
human beings said to themselves, when we were initiated, it
meant an ascent to a divine-spiritual world, but the breath of
mortality penetrated it. However, someone who can settle in
that what one can experience in the figure of Christ, in this
biggest impulse, who finds a relationship to Christ can know:
as well as the sun illumines the plant and wakes up life in it,
the Christ impulse can flow into the human soul. Thereby it
takes up the force that gives the soul knowledge of its
eternity and immortality, knowledge of the victory over death.
Because the soul gets a right understanding of Christ, it is
animated. The human being said to himself, there is still an
inner knowledge except that which can be taught externally
about Christ, the search of the soul, Ceridwen, for Hu or
Baldr, but for another Baldr, who accomplished the Mystery of
Golgotha. — If the soul experiences this, it attains a
higher clairvoyance than by the old mysteries. Here in Europe,
one soon understood quite deeply, what that means.
I
have already often explained what a jolt the human development
did by the Christ impulse. Let us go again back to the old
Hebrew consciousness. There we have the feeling of security of
the ego if the human being feels one with his fathers and
ancestors. It was a significant feeling to the human being of
the Old Testament if he could say to himself, I am one with my
ancestors. That for what I can say “I” is enclosed
between birth and death; but my blood runs down from Father
Abraham up to me. The blood that runs in my veins is the
expression of my ego, of my own individuality, the bloodstream
that goes through generations is the expression of my God.
— He felt secure in the big whole; he liked to be
immersed in the bloodstream that runs through the
generations.
Christ says, Before Father Abraham was, the “I-am”
was, and he says, “The Father and I are one.” Our
ego has connections in itself to a spiritual world, which
everybody can find in his own individuality. The ego that is
put on its own, nevertheless, does not deny the connection by
blood bonds, does not despise them, has an understanding of the
physical, this ego became understandable to the human being by
the Mystery of Golgotha. Therefore, one saw in the blood that
runs from the wounds of the Saviour the expression of the
general human ego, and one said to himself: someone who brings
this blood back to life in himself gets to real
clairvoyance.
However, the world was not yet ripe to accept the real secret
of Golgotha. Also during the following centuries after the
arrival of Christ, the world was not yet ripe and it is not yet
even today. Paul beheld the living Christ in the spiritual
world. Who understands the profound letters of Paul, this
initiate, and who characterises the disciple of Paul, Dionysius
the Areopagite correctly? Nevertheless, there were always
Christian mysteries.
In
the mysteries, which I have now described to you, in Wales and
Britain, just the teachings by Dionysius were accepted. Thus,
the Christ mystery impregnated and interspersed the druidic and
drotten mysteries. Thereby they became completely aware of the
fact that that what one searched in Hu and Baldr has come as
Christ. However, one said to oneself that the human beings were
not ripe in general to accept consciously what Christ brought:
the blood running from the wounds of the Saviour that runs
through all human beings.
Only in small circles of initiates, this had survived as the
holy Christian mystery. Who was initiated, however, into this
mystery experienced the overcoming of the usual ego directed to
the sensory world. However, he experienced it as follows. He
asked himself, how have I lived up to now?
When I wanted to know the truth, I went to the things of the
outside world. However, when the initiates of the Christian
mystery have accepted me, they demanded from me that I do not
wait until the outside things say to me what is true, but that
I ask in my soul for the invisible, not only inspired by the
outside world. — One called the questions of the soul for
the highest things the mystery of the Holy Grail in the later
times outside. The Grail legend, the Parzival legend, is
nothing else than an expression of the Christ mystery. The
Grail is that holy chalice, in which Christ took the Last
Supper, in which Joseph of Arimathea collected the blood of
Christ as it flowed on Golgotha. The blood of Christ was
brought to a holy place in such a chalice. As long as the human
beings do not ask for the invisible, they experience the same
as Parzival. Only when he asks, he becomes an initiate of the
Christ mystery.
So
we realise how Wolfram von Eschenbach (~1170-~1220, German poet
and Minnesinger) interweaves three stages of the human soul in
his representation which starts from the external sensuous
perception first where it gets to know what is true from the
material spirit. This is the soul in its “Tumbheit”
(guilelessness) as Wolfram expresses it.
Then the soul recognises that the outside world gives illusions
only. If the soul notices that in that what natural science is
able to give no answers are to be found but only questions, it
becomes addicted to “Zwifel” (doubt). Then,
however, it rises to “Saelde,” to bliss, to the
life in the spiritual worlds. These are the three stages of the
soul.
All
mysteries of the later time, which the Christ impulse
illumines, have a particular feature. Thereby they tower above
all old mysteries. Any initiation is based on the fact that the
human being rises to a higher view, to a higher development of
the soul.
Before he rises in such a way, he has three abilities in his
soul: thinking, feeling, and willing. He has these three soul
forces in himself. As long as he normally lives in the modern
world, these three soul forces are in an intimate connection.
With his ego, he is interwoven in thinking, feeling, and
willing because the human being has not worked from the ego on
the development of the higher bodies, before he ascends by
initiation. At first his astral body is purified, that is his
emotions and sensations, impulses and desires are purified. The
spirit self or “manas” emerges from it. Then the
human being comes so far at first that he intersperses any
thought with a certain feeling, that any thought becomes cold
or warm, that he transforms his etheric body or life body. This
is the transformation of feeling, and there emerges
“buddhi.” Then the will is still transformed in the
physical body into “atman” or spirit man. Thus, the
human being transforms his thinking, feeling, and willing and
with it his astral body to manas or spirit self, the etheric
body to buddhi or life spirit, the physical body to atman or
spirit man. This transformation is the expression of the
systematic work of the initiate on his soul by which he ascends
to the spiritual worlds.
However, something particular occurs if the initiation is
performed in full seriousness, not as a playing. If the
initiation is performed with dignity, it is, as if the human
organisation were separated in three parts and the ego sits
enthroned as a king above these three parts. Whereas the three
spheres of thinking, feeling, and willing are normally not
distinctly separated, the human being developing higher is more
and more able to think in such a way that the thoughts are not
brought immediately to feelings but are brought to sympathy and
antipathy by the ego by free choice. The feeling does not join
a thought immediately, but the human being splits in an
emotional human being, in a thinking human being and in a
willing human being.
The
human being feels as an ego-king that sits enthroned above a
triad. He disintegrates into three human beings. This takes
place at a certain stage of initiation. He realises that he
experiences all thoughts relating to the spiritual world by his
astral body. By the etheric body, he experiences everything
that penetrates the spiritual world as feelings, by the
physical body, he experiences all will impulses penetrating the
spiritual world. One says, the human being feels as a king
within the holy triad. However, someone who is not able and
ripe to endure that he is split cannot receive the fruits of
initiation. He is restrained by that for which he is not yet
ripe, he faces grief by grief. Someone who comes unworthily
close to the Holy Grail becomes a sufferer like Amfortas whom
only someone can relieve only who brings the good forces in his
nearness. Parzival relieves him.
Let
us go now again back to the principle of initiation. The
searching soul finds the spiritual world, the Holy Grail, which
is the symbol now, the expression of the spiritual world.
Single initiates really experienced what I have described. They
walked the way of Parzival. However, they were similar to those
who looked back as kings at the three bodies. Those, who
experienced that, said to themselves, I sit enthroned about my
purified astral body that is only purified following Christ. He
was not allowed to adhere to any external, to anything that
connects him with the outside world, but he had to combine in
the innermost soul with the Christ principle. Everything that
ties him to the sensory world had to fall down at the highest
moments, the mystic moments.
The
representative of an initiate is Lohengrin. One is not allowed
to ask him for name and class that means for that which
connects him with the sensory world. Someone who has no name
and class is called a “homeless” human being. The
Christ principle has penetrated him. He also looks down at the
etheric body or life body that has become life spirit as at
something that is separated from the astral body. It carries
him upwards to the higher worlds where space and time do not
exist. This etheric body and its organs correspond to the swan.
It carries Lohengrin across the sea in a small boat, across the
material in the physical body. One feels the physical body as
the small boat. Elsa of Brabant symbolises the searching soul
on earth, which experiences something new by initiation. We
have the opportunity here to characterise the legend of
Lohengrin, which still has many other meanings, as an
expression of the initiation within the mysteries, which
surround the Holy Grail.
The
secrets that were taught following the Christ mystery were
expressed in the mystery of the Holy Grail in the eleventh to
the thirteenth centuries that way. The knights of the Holy
Grail were the later initiates. The exoteric Christianity faced
them, whereas the esoteric Christianity was always fostered in
the mysteries that searched a relation to Christ, so that the
external Christ waked up the inner Christ in the soul whom a
dove symbolises.
The
whole progress of the European mysteries still expresses itself
in another mythology. However, it is very difficult to illumine
it. It happens later. Today we want only to illumine looking
for the reflection in that which outwardly seeped through and
appeared in a strange mythology. It is a legend, relatively
little known, which Konrad Fleck transformed into poetic form
in 1230. It belongs to the legends and myths of the Provence,
and joins the initiation of the Grail knights. It tells about
an old couple “Floris and Blancheflour.” This means
in our language: the flower with red petals or the rose, and
the flower with white petals or the lily. Many things were once
connected with this legend. I can only outline it sketchily
today. Floris and Blancheflour are souls incarnated in human
beings that have lived already once. The legend brings them
together with the grandparents of Charlemagne. Those who dealt
with the legends more intimately considered Charlemagne as that
figure which connected the inner esoteric Christianity with the
exoteric one in certain ways. This is expressed in the imperial
coronation. If one goes back to his grandparents, to Floris and
Blancheflour, the rose and the lily lived in them that should
retain the pure esoteric Christianity that goes back to
Dionysius the Areopagite. Now one saw in the rose, in Floris or
Flos the symbol of the human soul that has accepted the impulse
of personality, of the ego in itself, which brings the
spiritual into effect from its individuality, which has brought
the ego-impulse into the red blood. However, one regarded the
lily as the symbol of the soul, which can thereby only remain
spiritual that the ego remains outside, approaches only up to
the border. Thus, rose and lily are two contrasts. The rose has
the self-consciousness completely in itself, the lily
completely outside itself. However, the union of the soul that
is within, and the soul that animates the world outside as
world spirit has been there. Floris and Blancheflour express
that the human soul, the human ego finds the world soul, the
world ego.
This legend also expressed what happened later in the legend of
the Holy Grail. It is no exterior couple. In the lily the soul
is expressed which finds its higher egoity. In the union of the
lily soul and the rose soul, one saw that which could find a
connection with the Mystery of Golgotha. Hence, one said,
compared with the current of European initiation that
Charlemagne had caused and by which exoteric and esoteric
Christianity are forged together, the pure Christianity should
stay alive, should be continued purely. In the circles of
initiates, one said, the same soul, which was in Floris or Flor
and is sung in the poem, appeared as the founder of a new
mystery school, of Rosicrucianism reincarnated in the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This school has to foster
the Christ mystery in a new way corresponding to the modern
times. The secret of the rose already faces us in a relatively
old time. The legend is even already transferred into the time
before Charlemagne. Thus, the esoteric Christianity sought
refuge in Rosicrucianism. Rosicrucianism trained the initiates
since the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries who were the
successors of the old European mysteries and the successors of
the school of the Holy Grail.
Many a thing of the Rosicrucian mysteries seeped through.
However, what is told is often a caricature of the truth.
Profound achievements of spiritual life lead back to
Rosicrucianism, from which mysterious threads always lead to
the external culture. For example, a connection exists between
the
Nova Atlantis
by Francis Bacon (1561–1626) and
Rosicrucianism. Bacon represented more than a utopia with it.
He wants to point to higher stages, which revive the vague,
clairvoyant abilities of old Atlantis. However, what of the
external society of Rosicrucians is attached to it is
charlatanism and quackery, which cannot stay away in our time
since the invention of the art of printing.
Since then, it is no longer possible to keep a secret secret as
in old times. It depends on maturity or immaturity, everything
is easily distorted, is disfigured. This can happen with the
teachings of the anthroposophic movement quite extraordinarily!
If it were what one tells in the circles, which know nothing
about it and, nevertheless, talk about it, it would be
unbearable! In truth, this element is nourished from the
mysteries more than anything else is. It has brought about,
indeed, the best achievements of all times in humanity.
Goethe's greatest poetic deeds are fed from the sources of
Rosicrucianism. Goethe spoke not without reason in his poem
The Secrets
about a human being who is led to a house
that is decorated with a rose cross. “Who has associated
the roses to the cross?” Who were the initiates of the
European mysteries who associated the secret of the roses to
the secret of the cross? It becomes obvious that Goethe had
penetrated these secrets, gathering twelve human beings as
already in the old drotten mysteries. Oh, Goethe knew all these
things! However, those who study Goethe today resemble that
Goethe whom they can understand. Goethe was allowed to express
this only in mysterious ways; but today it is the time to speak
openly about the object of initiation. These talks owe their
existence to this fact.
More and more the knowledge comes by anthroposophy that
spiritual science does not change human beings to out-of-touch
romanticists, but to such human beings who are practical and
competent in life. It gives them hope and confidence. Thinking
develops more and more, so that one could say what Faust says
about Wagner, the representative of the materialist thinking,
“he digs with greedy hand for treasures, and is happy if
he finds earthworms!” — Really, materialism is
happy if it finds earthworms and can prove that they are
necessary in certain way to the cycle of everything that lives
and works on earth. However, what flows as spirit from the
mysteries makes the human thinking smooth to familiarise itself
with all possible situations. How it could be different,
because the sense of the world evolution is regiven in the
secrets of spiritual science!
I
wanted to bring home to you in the talks that the sense, which
prevails in the world, returns in spiritual science. If I have
fairly succeeded in that, the modest aim is attained which I
have targeted.
It
has become obvious that the world with all that lives in it is
born out of the spirit, and that the human being is born and
destined to rise to the spirit. Spiritual science shows us that
in the material the spirit is enchanted, that the
sensuous-material is the magic dress of the spiritual. The
human being is destined to disenchant the spirit from this
magic dress of the material. The spiritual finds its
resurrection in the human being, in the human soul towering
above itself. However, it is the task of spiritual science to
make the soul find the way to itself. Spirit finds spirit that
way. The human being understands the spirit more and more,
while he makes himself similar to it more and more.
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