II
I have sought out of the esoteric aspect of the Easter thought to
speak to you about how, when the course of Nature is permeated by
spirit, it must come about that an autumn festival is added to the
festivals of the year. This should be a kind of Michael festival,
placed in relation to the fall equinox approximately in the same way
as Christmas is to the winter solstice, Easter to the spring equinox,
and St. John's to the summer solstice.
I should like to try to bring closer to you the Easter thought
appropriate to the present age, particularly in its feeling content,
so that tomorrow I can lay before you the whole significance of such a
contemplation.
When we celebrate the Easter festival today, if we look about us into
the consciousness of contemporary humanity and are honest with
ourselves, we shall have to admit that the Easter thought is actually
very little true for the greater part of humanity! On what does the
truth of the Easter thought depend? The truth depends on a man's being
able to link with this thought a mental image showing the Christ Being
as having gone through death, having conquered Death, and then when He
had undergone death and the succeeding Resurrection, having thereafter
so united Himself with mankind that He could still give revelations to
those who had formerly been His disciples, to the Apostles. But the
Resurrection thought has more and more faded away, whereas when
Christianity was in its inception it had been so living that Paul's
words could sound across the ages from this epoch: And if the
Christ be not risen, then is... your faith vain!
Paul has here linked Christianity directly with the Easter thought,
that is with the thought of the Resurrection. People who have received
the education of the present day call the Resurrection a miracle, and
as miracle it is excluded from the realm of what is or can be reality.
So that for all those who can no longer penetrate to the Resurrection
thought, the Easter festival merely reflects an ancient custom, as do
the rest of the Christian festivals. In the course of the years we
have mentioned this from the most varied points of view.
It will first be necessary for mankind to reacquire a knowledge of the
spiritual world as such in order to understand events which do not
belong to the realm of sense reality; and what is connected with the
Resurrection thought must be regarded as such an event. Then it will
be possible for the Easter thought to become truly living again, which
it cannot be for a humanity that relegates the Resurrection to the
realm of unreal miracles.
The Easter thought arose in those epochs of mankind in which there
were still remnants of the ancient primitive human knowledge of the
spiritual world. We know that at the beginning of human
earth-evolution, man had a certain instinctive clairvoyance by means
of which he could gain glimpses of the spiritual world which led him
to view this world as of equal validity with the physical sense world.
This original instinctive clairvoyance is lost for earthly humanity.
But in the first three centuries of the Christian era, the last
remnants of it at least still existed. Hence in these centuries a
certain understanding of the Easter thought based upon ancient human
insight could still take root.
Such an understanding became blunted in the fourth century, when
preparation began for what has come to full expression since the first
third of the fifteenth century; namely, man's life in abstract, dead
thoughts, which we have often mentioned. In these abstract, dead
thoughts, in which natural science attains greatness, the Easter
thought soon died. Today the time has come when it must again awaken
as a living thought. But in order to awaken, it must pass over out of
the state of death into a state of livingness.
That which is living is characterized by the fact that it puts forth
something other than itself out of itself. In the early Christian
centuries, when the Easter thought was spreading throughout
Christendom, the Gemuets* of men were still sensitive
enough to experience inwardly something very powerful when they
pictured the grave of Christ and, rising out of the grave, that Being
Who was now united with mankind. The Gemuets could experience with
great inner force what appeared before their souls in this powerful
image. And this inner experience was a reality in the human
soul life.
* The Gemuet, or feeling soul, together with the intellectual soul
forms the centermost of the three soul elements in Rudolf Steiner's
picture of man. This soul element was predominant in the fourth
post-Atlantean epoch, in which the event of Golgotha took place.
Only that is a reality in the human soul life which this soul really
lays hold of, just as the senses ordinarily lay hold of the outer
sense world. The people of the early centuries felt that they were
changed by beholding the event of the Death and the Resurrection of
Christ. They felt that by this sight their souls were transformed,
just as a man feels that he is changed by physical events in the
course of his life on earth.
The human being is transformed at about the seventh year by the change
of teeth, and again at about the fourteenth or fifteenth year by the
onset of puberty. These are bodily transformations. In the
contemplation of the Easter thought the early Christians felt
themselves transformed in their inner soul life. They felt themselves
thereby lifted out of one stage of human existence and transported
into another.
In the course of time the Easter thought has lost this force, this
power, and it can regain it only when the Resurrection, which
cannot be understood according to natural laws, regains reality
through spiritual science, a science which comprehends the spiritual.
But what is spiritually conceived attains reality, not when this
spiritual is conceived merely in abstract thoughts but only when it is
also grasped in lively connection with the world appearing
before the senses.
Anyone who wants to cling to the spiritual only in its abstraction,
who says, for example, that we should not pull down the spiritual into
the physical sense world, should at the same time maintain that the
Divine Being is degraded when He is represented as having created the
world. The Divine is comprehended in its greatness and power, not when
we place it outside and beyond the sensible, but when we ascribe to it
the power to work in this sensible world, to permeate this sensible
world creatively. It is a debasing of the Divine to want to set it up
yonder in abstract heights, in a cloud-cuckoo-land. And we
will never live in spiritual realities if we conceive the spiritual
only in its abstractness, if we cannot bring it into connection with
the whole course of the world as this comes to meet us.
And this cosmic course, as far as our earthly life is concerned, meets
us first of all in the fact that this earthly life comprises a certain
number of years, and that these years present the return of certain
events in a regular rhythm, as I indicated yesterday. After a year we
return to approximately the same conditions of weather, of
sun-position, and so forth. The course of the year thus enters into
our earthly life in a rhythmical way.
We saw yesterday that this course of the year represents an
in-and-out-breathing by the Earth itself of soul-spiritual elements.
If we picture to ourselves once more the four high points of this
Earth breathing-process, as we allowed them to come before our souls,
we must say to ourselves: The time of the Christmas festival
represents the time when the Earth holds its breath within it. The
soul-spiritual part of the Earth is completely absorbed. Deep in the
bosom of the Earth there rests all that the Earth unfolded during
summer in order to let it be stimulated by the cosmos. All that opened
up to the cosmos and was yielded up to its forces during the
summertime has now been completely drawn in by the Earth, to rest in
her deeps at Christmas time. Man of course does not dwell in the
earthly depths; physically he lives on the surface of the Earth.
Soul-spiritually also, he does not dwell in the depths of the Earth,
for he lives actually in the Earth's periphery; he lives in the
atmosphere that surrounds the Earth.
Therefore esoteric wisdom has always recognized the essential being of
the Earth at the time of the winter solstice, at Christmas time, as
something concealed at first, as something which cannot be penetrated
by the ordinary forces of human knowledge, something which belongs in
the sphere of the esoteric mysteries. And in all ancient times when
something comparable to our present Christmas festival existed, it was
recognized that what goes on in connection with the Earth at Christmas
time could be grasped only by initiation into mystery-knowledge, by
the initiation still known in Greece as the Chthonian Mysteries. By
means of this initiation, man forsook in a certain way the periphery
of the Earth in which he lived with his ordinary consciousness, to
immerse himself in something into which he could not submerge
physically. He immersed himself in the soul-spiritual element, and
thus he learned to know what the Earth becomes during midwinter, when
she draws her soul-spiritual element into herself.
And then a man came to know through this Mystery initiation, that at
the time of the winter solstice the Earth is especially receptive to
permeation by the Moon forces. This was regarded as the secret
if I may express myself in the modern sense as the Christmas
secret of the ancient mysteries: that just at Christmas time one comes
to know how the Earth, by being permeated and saturated by her
spirit-soul-being, becomes especially receptive in her inner being to
the activity of the Moon forces.
In certain ancient times, for example, no one was entrusted with a
knowledge of healing science unless he was initiated in the Winter
Mysteries, and understood how the Earth, through the holding of her
breath, becomes especially susceptible inwardly to the activity of the
Moon forces, how at this time she permeates especially the plants with
healing forces, how at this time she makes the plant world, and to a
certain extent also the world of the lower animals into something
entirely different.
The Christmas initiation was felt as a descent into the depths of the
earthly world. But something else was connected with this Christmas
initiation; namely, something that was felt in a certain sense to be a
danger for the human being. A man said to himself: When anyone
really observes his consciousness in connection with what lives in the
Earth as Moon forces at Christmastime, he comes into a state of
consciousness in which he must be inwardly very strong, must have
inwardly fortified himself, in order to withstand the attack from all
sides of the Ahrimanic powers, who live in the Earth precisely because
of its having taken in the Moon activity. And only in the
strength which a man had himself developed in his soul-spiritual
being, in the strength to break the opposition of these forces, did he
see what makes it possible to endure his earth existence over the long
run.
But then some time after the celebration of these Christmas Mysteries,
the teachers of the Mysteries gathered their pupils together, and as a
sort of revelation, said to them the following: Certainly,
through initiation one can, in full consciousness, behold what is at
work within the Earth at the time of the winter solstice. But with the
oncoming of spring, when the plant world starts to grow, something
rises up out of the depths of the Earth which permeates all that is
growing and sprouting, permeates also man himself; namely, what the
Ahrimanic powers bring about. At a time when man was still endowed
with divine forces, as he was at the Earth's beginning, then through
this primordial divine heritage men could still resist the attack of
the Ahrimanic powers which broke over mankind in this way during the
time of the winter moon. But (so the initiates told their pupils) a
time will come when mankind will be rendered insensible to the
spiritual through the agency of the Moon forces which the Earth takes
up in the wintertime. With the growing and sprouting in the spring, a
kind of intoxication with regard to the spiritual will come over
mankind, depriving men of any consciousness that anything spiritual
exists. Then, should mankind not find it possible to resist these
intoxicating forces, the humanity of the Earth will go into decline
and not be able to develop further with the Earth to future higher
stages of earth evolution.
The initiates painted in gloomy colors the age which had to break in
for humanity in the fifteenth century, when mankind will excel to be
sure in abstract, dead thoughts, but when man can again acquire
spiritual capacities only by gaining new strength to overcome the
intoxicating forces that rise out of the Earth. This he can do by
developing the particular spiritual force now accessible to mankind.
When we form such visualizations, we transpose ourselves, so to speak,
into the connection that exists between the course of the year in
nature and what lives in the spirit. We bring together what is
otherwise abstract, merely thought-out, with what is the natural
sensible course as it confronts us, for example, in the seasons.
The polar opposite of this Christmas Mystery is the St. John's
Mystery, at the time of the summer solstice. Then the Earth has
completely exhaled. The spirit-soul element of the Earth is then
utterly surrendered to the super-earthly powers, to the cosmic powers.
Then the spirit-soul element of the Earth takes in all that is
extraterrestrial. Just as the ancient initiates had said of the
Christmas Mystery, so they said also of the St. John's Mystery (we use
modern forms of expression, but there were appropriate forms in the
ancient Mysteries also) the initiates said that it was
necessary to attain initiation in order to penetrate the secrets of
the St. John's Mystery, that is, the secrets of the heavens. For man
belongs to the periphery of the Earth; he belongs neither within the
Earth, nor as earthly man does he belong to the heavens. Hence he must
be initiated into the secrets of the sub-earthly in order to come to
know the secrets of the super-earthly.
In a certain way, the Easter Mystery and the Michael or Autumn Mystery
were seen as holding the balance between the super-earthly and the
sub-earthly. And the Michael Mystery, as we have said, will first
attain its proper significance in the time that is still future to our
own.
The Easter Mystery in its full magnitude entered into the evolution of
mankind through the Mystery of Golgotha. And this Easter Mystery was
understood, as I have already said, because remnants of the ancient
clairvoyance still existed. At that time people could still raise
themselves up in their Gemuets or feeling souls to the resurrected
Christ. The Easter Mystery was therefore woven into that ritual which
was not an initiation ritual, but a ritual for mankind in general; it
was woven into the ritual of the celebration of the Mass.
But with the retreat of primitive clairvoyance, the understanding of
the Easter Mystery was lost. People begin to discuss a matter only
when they no longer understand it. All the discussion that began after
the first Christian centuries about how the Easter thought is to be
understood derive from the fact that people could no longer comprehend
it in a direct elementary way.
Now we have often been able to apply to the Easter thought what
anthroposophical spiritual science gives to us. What is essential here
is that this anthroposophical spiritual research points again to forms
of life which are not exhausted between birth and death in the sense
world; that it places what can be spiritually investigated over
against what can be sensibly investigated; that it makes
comprehensible how the Christ could converse with His disciples, even
after the physical body was turned to dust. In the light of spiritual
research, the Resurrection thought becomes alive again. But this
Resurrection thought will be fully understood only if it is linked to
what I might call its counter-pole. What then does the Resurrection
thought really portray? The Christ Being descended from spiritual
heights, entered into the body of Jesus and lived on Earth in this
body, thereby bringing into the earthly sphere forces in themselves
super-terrestrial. And these super-earthly forces which the Christ
Being brought into the earthly sphere were from the time of the
Mystery of Golgotha on, united with the forces of mankind's evolution.
Since then that which the men of ancient times could behold only
outside in cosmic space is to be feelingly perceived within the
evolution of earthly humanity. Following the Resurrection, the Christ
united Himself with mankind, and since then He lives, not only in the
super-earthly heights, but also within the earth-existence; He lives
in evolution, in the stream of mankind's evolution.
Above all, this event must be regarded not from the earthly point of
view alone, but also from the super-earthly viewpoint. We can say that
we should not view the Christ only in the way He comes to Earth out of
heavenly worlds and becomes man, in the way He is given to men, but we
should view this Christ Event also from the standpoint that the Christ
actually departs from the spiritual world when He descends to the
Earth.
Human beings saw the Christ arise in their realm. The Gods saw the
Christ forsake the heavenly world and plunge down among mankind. For
men the Christ appeared; for certain spiritual beings He vanished.
Only when He passed through the Resurrection did He appear again to
certain extraterrestrial spiritual beings, now shining out to them
from the Earth like a star, a star which radiates out from the Earth
into the spiritual world. Spiritual beings mark the Mystery of
Golgotha by saying: A star began to shine out from the Earth
into the spiritual realm. And it was felt to be of immense
importance for the spiritual world that the Christ had submerged into
a human body, and had gone through death in this body. For by
partaking in death in a human body He was enabled immediately after
this death to undertake something which His former divine companions
could by no means have accomplished.
These former divine companions confronted, as an inimical world, what
even in earlier times was called hell. But the efficacy of
these spiritual beings stopped short at the gates of hell. These
spiritual beings worked upon man. The forces of man extend even into
hell. This signifies nothing other than man's subconscious projection
into the Ahrimanic forces in the wintertime and also into the ascent
of these Ahrimanic forces in the spring. The divine spiritual beings
felt this as a world opposed to them. They saw it rise up out of the
Earth and felt it to be an exceedingly problematic world. But they
themselves had only a roundabout connection with it through man. They
could only observe it in a certain way. But because the Christ had
descended to the Earth, had Himself become man, He could descend into
the realm of these Ahrimanic powers and overcome them. This is
expressed in the Creed as the Descent into Hell.
This Descent into Hell provides the opposite pole to the Resurrection.
This is what Christ has done for mankind: By descending from the
divine heights and taking on the form of man, He became able actually
to descend into the realm to whose dangers man is exposed, into which
the other Gods, who had not been exposed to human death could not
descend. In His way the Christ gained the victory over death. And
therewith entered, I might say, as the opposite pole of the Descent
into Hell, the ascent into the spiritual world, in spite of the fact
that the Christ remained on Earth. For Christ had so united Himself
with mankind that he had descended to that to which mankind is
exposed. During the winter and spring seasons, He could win for man
that which works out of extraterrestrial regions into the Earth again
from St. John's to autumn. Thus in the Easter thought we see united in
a certain way the Descent into the region of Hell, and through this
descent the winning of the heavenly region for the further evolution
of mankind.
All this belongs to a right conception of the Easter thought. But what
would this Easter thought be if it could not become living! It was
possible in ancient times to connect the right feeling awareness with
the thought of the winter solstice only because they had on the other
hand the St. John's thought. Schematically drawn: If one had the
earthly with its deeply concealed winter nature (orange), then
its counterpart was what in summer lay in the super-earthly periphery
(orange). Both were to be reached only through initiation, yet
they were connected by what was in the atmosphere surrounding the
Earth, in the Earth's periphery (green), Christmas calls for
St. John's. St. John's calls for Christmas. Man would rigidify under
the influence of the Ahrimanic powers if he could not be exposed to
the loosening Luciferic powers, who again give wings to thought, so
that it need not remain rigid but can thaw again under the influence
of the light.
At first humanity in its evolution had only the one pole, the Easter
pole, and this Easter pole became paralyzed. The Easter festival lost
its inner vitality. It will regain its inner life only when man can
think about this festival in such a way that he can say to himself:
Through what is symbolically expressed in the Descent into Hell
which in reality can be understood as the Resurrection a
counterweight was given against something which had to come; namely,
the paralyzing of all spiritual vision, its dying away in the earthly
life. Prophetically, Christ Jesus wanted to prepare for what had to
come; namely, the circumstance that man during his life on Earth
between birth and death would have to forget the super-earthly, the
spiritual, that he would in a certain way die to the spiritual.
Opposed to this dying away of man in earthly life stands the Easter
thought of the victory of super-earthly life over the earthly.
On the one side is this: Man descends from his pre-earthly life; but
in the period that dawned in the first half of the fifteenth century,
he will in his earthly life more and more forget his super-earthly
origin; as to his soul-being he will die away, as it were, in the
earthly life. That stands on the one side.
On the other stands this: There was a spiritual, heavenly Being, Who
by His deed, working out of the heavens into the Earth, set forth the
counter-image. That spiritual Being descended into a human body, and
in the Resurrection has, through His own being, placed the
super-earthly spiritual among the men of Earth. In remembrance of this
we have the Easter festival, which puts before mankind the picture of
the burial of Christ Jesus and the Resurrection of Christ Jesus.
He was laid in the grave and thereafter He arose this is the
Easter thought, as it stands in cosmic records... Look upon
thyself, O Man; thou descendest out of the super-earthly worlds; thou
art threatened by the danger that thy soul will die away in the
earthly life. Therefore the Christ appears, Who sets before thine eyes
how that from which thou also didst arise, how that super-earthly
spiritual conquers death. There stands before thee in mighty images
such as could be placed before mankind: the entombment of Christ
Jesus, the Resurrection of Christ Jesus. He was laid in the grave. He
rose from the grave and appeared to those who could behold Him.
But with the paralyzed soul forces of man today, this image can no
longer become living. Where could it become alive? In a traditional
faith man can still look upon what the Easter festival gives him: Upon
the sublime picture of the burial and the Resurrection. But out of the
inner force of his soul, he can no longer, of himself, find anything
to connect with this Easter thought, with the thought of the
entombment and the Resurrection. It is out of spiritual knowledge that
he must again unite something with it.
And this something is another thought, to which there can be no
alternative. It is, however, possible for a human being to let
spiritual knowledge approach him so that he may understand this
other. Let us place this other before
ourselves, so as to inscribe it deeply within our souls. Easter
thought: He has been laid in the grave; He is risen. Now let us
place before ourselves the other thought which must come over mankind:
He is risen and can confidently be laid in the grave. Easter
thought: He has been laid in the grave; He is risen. Michaelmas
thought: He is risen and can confidently be laid in the grave.
The first thought, the Easter thought, pertains to the Christ;
the second thought pertains to the human being. It pertains
to the man who directly comprehends the power of the Easter thought,
comprehends how when spiritual knowledge enters into the earthly life
of the present, in which his soul-spiritual is dying away, his soul
can resurrect, so that he becomes living between birth and
death, so that in the earthly life he becomes inwardly alive.
The human being must through spiritual knowledge comprehend this inner
resurrection, this inner awakening; then will he confidently be laid
in the grave. Then he may be laid in the grave, through which he
otherwise would fall prey to those Ahrimanic powers who work within
the earth realm at the time of the winter solstice.
And the festival which contains this thought: He is risen and
can confidently be laid in the grave this festival must
fall in the time when the leaves are beginning to turn yellow and fall
from the trees, when the fruits have ripened, when the Sun has
received that power which brings to maturity what in the spring was
budding and sprouting, full of the forces of growth, but which also
brings withering and the inclination to seek again the inner part of
the Earth; when what is developing on the Earth begins to be a symbol
of the grave.
If we place the Easter festival at the time when life begins to bud
and to sprout, when the forces of growth attain their highest point,
then the other festival, which contains: He is risen and can
confidently be laid in the grave, we must place at the time when
Earth nature begins to wither, when the mood of the grave is spreading
abroad in Earth nature, when the symbol of the grave can appear before
the soul of man. Then the Michael thought begins to stir in man, that
thought which is not, like the Easter thought in the earliest
centuries of Christianity, directed toward a kind of inner perceiving
(Anschauung).*
* It is assumed that Anschauung here is intended to describe
the way man's Gemuet could inwardly experience the Entombment
and Resurrection, as was indicated earlier. This would be
perceptively, feelingly, rather than through logic.
In the first centuries of Christianity, this feeling perception was
directed to the Christ laid in the grave and risen. In this
perception the soul was made strong, was filled with its
strongest forces. In the festival-thought at the time of the fall
equinox, the soul must feel its strength when appeal is made not to
its perceiving, but to its will. Take into thyself the
Michael thought which confers the Ahrimanic powers, that thought which
makes thee strong to gain here on Earth knowledge of the spirit, so
that thou canst overcome the powers of Death. As the
Easter thought is directed to the perception, this thought is directed
to the will-powers: to take up the Michael force, which means to
take the force of spiritual knowledge into the will-forces. And so
the Easter thought can become living, can be brought directly to the
human soul and spirit, when now the Michael thought, the thought of
the Michael festival in the autumn, is felt to be the counter-pole of
the Easter thought just as the St. John's thought was perceived
to be the counter-pole of the Christmas thought. As the Christmas
thought by its inner livingness, has brought forth the St. John's
thought after a half-year, so must the Easter thought bring forth the
Michael thought. Mankind must attain an esoteric maturity, so as to
think, not merely abstractly, but to be able again to think so
concretely that men can again become festival-creating. Then it will
be possible again to unite something spiritual with the cycle of sense
phenomena.
All our thoughts are so abstract! But no matter how remarkable they
are, how intelligent, if they remain abstract, life will not be able
to penetrate them. When today men reflect that Easter might be set
abstractly on any day, no longer according to the constellations of
the stars, when today all higher knowledge is darkened, when man no
longer sees any relation between insight into the soul-spiritual and
the natural-physical forces, the force must once more awaken in man
which will be able to unite something spiritual directly with the
sense phenomena of the world.
Wherein then did the spiritual strength of man consist, making him
able to create festivals in the course of the year, in accordance with
the yearly phenomena? It consisted in the primal spiritual force.
Today men can continue to celebrate festivals according to the ancient
traditional custom, but they must gain once more the esoteric force
out of themselves to speak something into Nature that
accords with natural events. It must become possible to grasp the
Michael thought as the blossom of the Easter thought. While the Easter
thought stems from physical blossoming, it will become possible to
place the blossom of the Easter thought the Michael thought
into the course of the year as the outcome of physical
withering.
People must learn once more to think the spiritual
together with the course of nature. It is not admissible
today for a person merely to indulge in esoteric speculations; it is
necessary today to be able once again to do the esoteric. But
people will be able to do this only when they can conceive their
thoughts so concretely, so livingly that they don't withdraw from
everything that is going on around them when they think, but rather
that they think with the course of events: think together
with the fading of the leaves, with the ripening of the fruits,
in a Michaelic way, just as at Easter one knows how to think with the
sprouting, springing, blossoming plants and flowers.
When it is understood how to think with the course of the year, then
forces will intermingle with the thoughts that will let men again hold
a dialogue with the divine spiritual powers revealing themselves from
the stars. Men have drawn down from the stars the power to establish
festivals which have an inner human validity. Festivals must be
founded out of inner esoteric force. Then from the dialogue with the
fading, ripening plants, with the dying Earth, by finding the right
inward festival mood, men will also again be able to hold converse
with the Gods and link human existence with divine existence.
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