IV
E HAVE SEEN
that out of the Mysteries grew something that made man aware of being related
to the world in a way that can be expressed in the annual festivals;
and in particular we have learned that Easter is an outgrowth
of the principle of initiation. From all that has been set forth it
will have become evident what a significant role the Mysteries played
in the entire evolution of humanity. Really everything of a spiritual
nature that has permeated the world and developed through mankind
originated in the old Mysteries. In modern terms we could say
that the Mysteries were all-powerful in guiding the spiritual
life.
Now, it was
intended from the beginning that mankind should develop freedom; and
to this end it was necessary for the old Mystery system to recede and
for humanity to be less closely linked, for a time, with the powerful
guidance that proceeded from the Mysteries, to be cast more upon its
own resources, as it were. We certainly cannot assert today that the
time has arrived in which men have achieved their true inner freedom
and are ready to pass over into the next phase of evolution that is
to follow upon that of freedom. This is not the case. Still, many
have already passed through a number of incarnations in which the
power of the Mysteries was less strongly felt than formerly; and
though the seeds of these incarnations have not yet sprouted, they
are nevertheless potentially present in the souls of men. And
with the coming of a more spiritual age they will develop what they
have not developed in their present dimness of vision. Above
all things, however, it will be necessary that the wisdom, the
vision, the experience of the spiritual such as can be attained by
modern initiation, be met with esteem, with reverence; and this must
be offered out of man's freedom. Without esteem and reverence, true
enlightenment and a spiritual life of humanity is really not
possible.
Surely we make the right use of festivals if with their help we
try to implant in our souls this esteem, this reverence for things
spiritual as they have evolved during the course of human history; if
we try to learn how to observe in the most intimate way possible the
spiritual significance of outer events, to understand how these carry
spiritual meaning from one age over into another. For the time being
men keep returning to Earth in repeating incarnations, thus carrying
over their experiences of earlier epochs into later ones. Human
beings are the most important factor in the further development of
all that takes place within the history of mankind. But men of all
periods live in a definite environment, and clearly, one of the most
significant environments was that of the Mysteries. A most important
factor in the progress of humanity is the carrying over of what has
been experienced in the Mysteries and re-experienced, be it again
through the medium of Mysteries, whence it acts upon mankind, or by
other means of enlightenment. Today it must be the latter, for the
true Mystery system has withdrawn from the present outer world and is
to reappear only in the future.
If the impulse that went forth from here, from the Goetheanum, at
the time of the Christmas Meeting, really takes root in the
Anthroposophical Society, it is certain that by leading to ever
deeper insight the Anthroposophical Society will be the foundation
for the Mysteries of the future. These new Mysteries must be
consciously nurtured by the Anthroposophical Society. We recall
an event that can be utilized in our development as once a similar
one was used: the burning of the Temple of Ephesus. Both were the
result of a grave wrong; yet on different planes things have
different meanings, and it is possible for a frightful
iniquity, as it appears on one plane, to be employed on another for
the advancement of human freedom — in the sense that
precisely such horrible events can bring about a real advance in
human progress.
But as I have already said, such matters must be grasped through
their inner meaning if they are to be approached understandingly. One
must enter into the particular manner in which the spiritual element
of the world pervaded the Mysteries. Yesterday I pointed out how the
establishment of the annual Easter Festival grew out of a spiritual
conception of the constellation of Sun and Moon, and that from the
Moon viewpoint the other planets were observed. And I said further
that according to what is learned by observing the other planets, the
human being, in descending from the pre-earthly to the earthly
existence, is guided in forming his light-ether
body.
If we would observe and rightly understand how this light-ether
body, these ether forces, are transmitted to us by the Moon forces,
Moon observations — by what I might call the spiritual Moon
observatory, this can be done as we have just endeavored to do it: by
turning to the cosmos where it is all inscribed and exists as a fact.
But it is important to ponder in our souls the human element as well,
the part it plays in the different epochs as a factor of these
truths.
As a matter of fact, never did the souls of men take part so
intimately, so fervently, in this last phase of the descent to Earth
— the enveloping in an etheric body — as in the Mysteries
of Ephesus. There the whole service of the Goddess of Ephesus,
exoterically called Artemis, was directed toward co-experiencing the
spiritual weaving life within the cosmic ether. When members of the
Ephesian Mystery approached the image of the Goddess, the feeling
this gave them may be said to have become intensified to hearing; and
what they heard, as though the goddess were speaking, was
something as follows: I rejoice in all that bears fruit in the
wide expanse of cosmic ether. — A deep impression was created
by this expression of intense joy on the part of the Goddess of the
Temple, her joy in all that grows, sprouts and burgeons in the
world-ether; and an ardent feeling of close relationship with
blossoming and flowering was in particular something that permeated
the spiritual atmosphere of the Ephesian Sanctuary as with a
magic breath.
Nowhere else was
the growth of the plant life, the drive of the Earth forces into
the plants, co-experienced so intensely as in the Mystery of Ephesus,
for the entire training here tended to that end. And this led to the
next step: it was here that instruction was given, if I may so call
it, specially intended to induce in the minds of members a
feeling for the Moon secret, of which I spoke yesterday. It was
everyone's own experience to feel himself as a light-being,
because the act of receiving his light-form from the Moon was
made so alive for the neophytes and initiates.
A
part of the ritual ran something as follows — and one who could
take part in it was actually transported into that act of
forming himself out of the sunlight that circles around the
Moon: as though proceeding from the Sun, there came to him the
sound J O A.*
* Translator's Note: —
For readers not familiar with German it must be explained that j is
pronounced like our y in “yet” — in other words,
like an excessively short German i. For this reason it is not too
strange that one often encounters J for I (but only in
capitals), and the above is a case in point. Indeed, there is no
choice here but to use it, as the same letter must serve as a pure
vowel in J O A and later as a modified vowel in Jehova. — The
letters J O A must be pronounced Ee Oh Ah, and Jehova that appears
later, Yay-hoh-vah.
He knew that this
J O A activated his ego, his astral body. J O (ego, astral body) and
A (the approach of the light-ether body), joining in J O A. Then,
with the J O A vibrating in him, he felt himself to be composed of
ego, astral body and etheric body.
And then it seemed as though he heard sounding up to him from the
Earth — for he had been transported into the cosmos —
something that saturated the J O A: eh v.
Jeh Ov A
What rose up to him in the eh v were the Earth forces.
Now he realized that in this
Jeh Ov A
he felt the complete human
being. The premonition of the physical body, which he acquired only
on Earth, he felt intimated in the consonants complementing the
vowels that in the J O A indicate the ego, the
astral and the etheric body. — This becoming one with the
Jeh Ov A
was what enabled the
disciple of Ephesus to sense in their full significance the last
steps of the descent from the spiritual
world.
But in feeling the import of this J O A the neophyte at the same
time felt himself to be the sound J O A in the light. Then he was a
human being: resonant ego, resonant astral body, in a shimmering
light-ether body. He was sound in light. That is the nature of cosmic
man; and in this state the initiate was able to grasp what he saw in
the cosmos, just as on Earth he could perceive through his eyes what
occurs in the physical environment of the Earth. When the neophyte of
Ephesus bore this J O A within him he really felt transported into
the Moon sphere, and he took part in all that could be observed from
the point of view of the Moon.
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In this condition
the human being was man in general, in the sense that the
differentiation between man and woman did not enter until the descent
to Earth occurred. Man felt himself transported into this pre-earthly
existence, the region immediately preceding his approach to the
terrestrial. The Ephesian disciples were able to achieve this ascent
to the Moon sphere in a particularly intimate way; and henceforth
they carried in their heart, in their soul, what they had experienced
there. It sounded for them something as follows:
World-engendered being, thou art shaped in light,
By the Sun empowered in the Moon's full might;
Mars' creating chiming, power to thee is bringing,
And Mercury, moving limbs in oscillation swinging;
Jupiter's radiant wisdom is on thee gleaming,
And Venus' love-bearing beauty is on thee beaming;
So that Saturn's world-aged spirit-inwardness
Doth to space's being and to ages now aborning consecrate thee.*
* Translation by Henry B. Monges.
Weltentsprossenes Wesen, du in Lichtgestalt,
Von der Sonne erkraftet in der Mondgewalt,
Dich beschenket des Mars erschaffendes Klingen
Und Merkurs gliedbewegendes Schwingen,
Dich erleuchtet Jupiters erstrahlende Weisheit
Und der Venus liebetragende Schönheit,
Dass Saturns weltenalte Geist-Innigkeit
Dich dem Raumessein und Zeitenwerden weihe!
That expresses
what permeated every Ephesian, and he counted it the most important
of all that pulsed through his being. When a participant in the
Ephesian Mysteries heard these words ringing in his ears, as it were,
there was something about them that made him feel himself completely
as a human being; for through them he became aware of the relation
between the forces of his etheric body and the planetary system. This
came to forceful expression. The cosmos speaks to the etheric
body:
World-engendered being, thou art shaped in light,
By the Sun empowered in the Moon's full might.
Now the human
being feels himself to be in the power of the moonlight.
Mars' creating chiming, power to thee is bringing.
The chiming,
endowed with creative force, sounds across from Mars. And what gave
strength to man's limbs, endowing him with the power of
movement:
And Mercury, moving limbs in oscillation swinging.
From Jupiter there rays across:
Jupiter's radiant wisdom is on thee gleaming.
And from Venus:
And Venus' love-bearing beauty ...
In order that then
Saturn may gather up all that rounds off the human being within and
without, prepare him to descend to Earth and there to clothe himself
in a physical garb; and then further enable this physically garbed
being, who bears the god within him, to live on the
Earth:
So that Saturn's world-aged spirit-inwardness
Doth to space's being
And to ages now aborning
Consecrate thee.
From what I have described you can readily see that the spiritual
life in Ephesus was colorful and aglow with inner light. Epitomized
in the thought of Easter, it comprised really everything that had
ever been known about man's true dignity in the cosmos, in the whole
universe. And many of the wanderers I mentioned yesterday —
those who went from one Mystery to another in order to benefit by the
totality of the Mysteries — many of these have repeatedly
assured us that nowhere else as in Ephesus — at least, not so
joyously — did they perceive so intimately and brightly
the harmony of the spheres through that Moon point of view, where the
radiant astral light of the world shone on them, where they sensed it
in the spiritual sunlight flooding the Moon: in other Mysteries the
saturation of man's soul and spirit with astral light was not
felt with such an intense, inner artistic grasp.
All this was
associated with the temple that went up in flames by the hand of a
criminal or a lunatic. But as I mentioned during the Christmas
Conference, initiates of the Ephesian Mysteries were re-embodied in
Aristotle and Alexander; and these personalities came close to what
was still capable of being sensed, in their time, of the Mysteries of
Samothrace.
Now, what appears
to be an outwardly fortuitous event can be of great spiritual
significance in world evolution. Among ourselves it has frequently
been mentioned for years that the Temple of Ephesus was burned at the
hour in which Alexander the Great was born. But as this temple
burned, something significant occurred.
What untold
experiences had come to the dwellers in that temple through the
centuries! What a wealth of spiritual light and wisdom had suffused
its halls! And while the flames lept up from the Temple of
Ephesus, all that wisdom was imparted to the cosmic ether, so that we
may say: the perpetually recurring Easter Festival of Ephesus that
had been locked in the temple halls was henceforth inscribed in the
dome of the universe, in so far as this is etheric, though in less
legible letters.
That is often the
way things work out: much human wisdom that in olden times had been
enclosed within temple walls was released, was inscribed in the
world-ether, and there at once becomes visible to one who
ascends to real imagination. And this imagination is the interpreter,
as it were, of the secret of the stars: what once was secret within
the temples has been inscribed in the world-ether, and there it can
be read by means of imagination.
We can put it
another way, but it means the same. I go out into the starlit night,
contemplate the firmament and throw myself open to it. Then, if I
have the right capacity, the forms of the constellations and
the movements of the planets are transmuted as into vast cosmic
script. And if I read this script, something emerges like that which
I explained yesterday in referring to the Moon secret. When the stars
no longer remain merely something to be mathematically and
mechanically computed, but become the alphabet of cosmic script,
these things can indeed be read there.
But I should like to develop the matter further. When Alexander
and Aristotle approached the Kabirian secrets in Samothrace at a time
when the old Mysteries were already on the decline,
[Samothrace still
existed as a memorial and also as a sanctuary for work, but in the
main the Mystery schools had declined in the time of Alexander.]
something occurred to them at
that moment through the influence of the Kabirian Mysteries like a
memory of the old Ephesian time, which both had passed through in a
certain century. And once more there resounded the J O A, and again
they heard intoned:
World-engendered being, thou art shaped in light,
By the Sun empowered in the Moon's full might;
Mars' creating chiming, power to thee is bringing,
And Mercury, moving limbs in oscillation swinging;
Jupiter's radiant wisdom is on thee gleaming,
And Venus' love-bearing beauty is on thee beaming;
So that Saturn's world-aged spirit-inwardness
Doth to space's being and to ages now aborning consecrate thee.
But in this memory, this historical recollection of something
ancient, there resided a certain power, the power to create
something new. And from that moment there streamed forth this
power to create something new — but it was something strange
and little observed by mankind. For you must really first understand
the nature of this creative power that went forth from the
collaboration of Alexander and Aristotle.
Take any notable poem or other work of art — it can be a
most beautiful one, such as the
Bhagavad Gita
or Goethe's
Faust
or his
Iphigenia
— anything you value very highly — and reflect on its rich
and mighty content — let us say, on the content of Goethe's
Faust.
Now, by what means, my dear
friends, is this rich content transmitted to you? Let us assume
that it is transmitted in the ordinary way, as it is to most people.
At some time during your life you read
Faust.
What did you encounter on the
physical plane — on the paper? Nothing but combinations of a b c,
and so forth. The means by which the mighty content of
Faust
is disclosed to us consists
only of combinations of the letters of the alphabet. If you know the
alphabet, the paper contains nothing that does not correspond with
one of the twenty-odd letters. Something is conjured up out of these
twenty-odd letters — if you know how to read — that
evokes for you the whole glorious substance of
Faust.
You may find it excessively
tiresome to recite the alphabet, and you may consider it as abstract
as anything could well be; yet rightly combined, this superlative
abstraction gives us the whole of
Faust.
Now, when there was heard again the cosmic resounding from the
Moon that disclosed to Aristotle and Alexander what the blaze of
Ephesus signified, how that fire had carried the secret of Ephesus
out into the world-ether, there came to Aristotle the inspiration to
found the cosmic script. This, however, is not achieved by means of
the alphabet, but rather through thoughts, as book writing is made up
of letters. And so the letters of the cosmic script came into being.
— When I write them down for you they are just as abstract as
the alphabet:
Being |
|
Time |
Quantity (amount) |
|
Position |
Quality (attribute) |
|
Having |
Relationship |
|
Doing |
Space |
|
Suffering |
There you have a
number of concepts. They originated when Aristotle laid them before
Alexander. Learn to accomplish with these concepts what you do with
the alphabet, and you will have learned to read in the cosmos by
means of Being, Quantity, Quality, Relationship, Space, Time,
Position, Having, Doing, Suffering.
In our age of abstractions something peculiar happened to logic,
as it is taught in the schools. Imagine a custom existing in some
school to teach — not reading, but, for instance, to provide
books from which the pupils had to keep learning the letters in all
conceivable combinations, but never arriving at using them for
envisioning the wealth of the contents: that would be the same as
what the world has done to Aristotle's Logic. In the books on logic
are listed his categories — that's what people call them. People
memorize them, but have no idea what to do with them. It is exactly
like memorizing the alphabet without knowing how to apply
it.
Reading the cosmic records bases on something just as simple as
extracting the content of
Faust
by means of the alphabet
— it must merely be learned. And fundamentally, all that
anthroposophy has ever brought forth or ever will has been
experienced by means of these concepts, just as what is read in
Faust
is experienced through the
letters. For all the secrets of the physical and the spiritual world
are comprised in these simple concepts that are the cosmic
alphabet.
Something
intervened in Earth evolution at the time of Alexander that
stands in contrast with the direct perception so characteristic
of Ephesus. It did not develop till later, especially during the
Middle Ages; and it is deeply hidden, profoundly esoteric. Profoundly
esoteric is the meaning that dwells in those ten simple concepts; and
actually we are learning more and more to live in them. But we must
keep striving to experience them as livingly in our soul as we do the
alphabet when a wealth of spiritual substance is in
question.
Thus you see how something that for thousands of years had been a
mighty instinctive revelation of wisdom flowed into ten concepts,
whose inner power and light, however, remain to be re-disclosed. And
when man will have learned again to read in the cosmos, when he will
experience the resurrection of what has lain buried as though in a
grave during this interlude in human evolution between the two
spiritual ages, then it will come about at some future time that the
world wisdom, the light of the world, will be found again. It is our
task, my dear friends, to bring to light again what is hidden. We
must make of Easter an experience for all humanity. And just as it
could be said on other occasions that anthroposophy is a Christmas
experience, so it is in its whole manifestation an Easter experience,
a resurrection experience coupled with an experience of the grave.
And it is especially important during this Easter gathering
that we should feel, if I may so express it, the solemnity of
anthroposophic striving by realizing that today we can turn to a
spiritual Being Who may be close to us, directly beyond the
threshold, and appeal to Him thus: Oh, how blessed was mankind at one
time with divine-spiritual revelation that still shone so very
bright in Ephesus! But now all that is buried. How can I uncover what
is so deeply buried? — for one would like to believe that what
once existed might in some historical way be found again in the
grave where it lies.
Then the Being
will reply to us, as did once before a like being in a similar case:
What you seek is no longer here. It is in your heart, if only you
will unlock your heart in the right way.
Anthroposophy is indeed latent in the hearts of men, but it is
for these human hearts to open in the right way. That is what we must
deeply feel. Then we will be led back — not instinctively, as
of old, but in full awareness — to the wisdom that lived and
shone in the Mysteries.
All this I would like to implant in your hearts, my dear friends,
at this Easter time; for to permeate yourself with something that can
enkindle a feeling of solemnity in every heart dedicated to
anthroposophy, that is something which carries up into the spiritual
world and which must be correlated with the Christmas impulse given
at Dornach. For this impulse must not remain a thought-out,
intellectualistic one, but must spring from the heart; it must not be
formal or matter-of-fact, nor must it be sentimental: it must issue
from the cause itself and bear the mark of solemnity. When the
conflagration at Ephesus blazed up, first in the outer ether and then
in the heart of Aristotle, it revealed anew to Aristotle the secrets
that could then be epitomized in the simplest terms; and we may say
in all modesty that, just as he was able to use the fire of Ephesus
to this end, so it is our task — and we shall fulfill it
— to use what the flames of the Goetheanum carried into the
ether: the aims and purpose of
anthroposophy.
What do we gather from all this, my dear friends? That at the
memorial service in the Christmas-New Year time, the time in which
the disaster struck us a year before, it was vouchsafed us to send
forth a new impulse from the Goetheanum. How could this be? Because
we are right in feeling that what had previously been a cause
pertaining to this Earth, worked for and established as such, was
carried by the flames out into cosmic space. Because this misfortune
has come to us we are, recognizing its consequences, justified in
saying, Now we understand that we may no longer represent a mere
Earth cause, but must know it as one of wide etheric space in which
the spirit lives: the cause represented by the Goetheanum is a cause
of the cosmic ether in which lives the spirit-filled wisdom of the
world. It has been carried out into the ether; and it is granted us
to permeate ourselves with the Goetheanum impulses flowing in
from the cosmos.
Take this in any sense — as an image, if you like: even as
an image it signifies a profound truth, a truth that can be simply
expressed: the Christmas impulse calls for the permeation of
anthroposophical activity with an esoteric element. This is present
because what had been earthly now reacts on the impulses of the
anthroposophical movement through the astral light in the physical
fire that rayed forth into cosmic space; but we must be able to
receive these impulses.
Then, if we are
able to receive them, we feel a certain important link in the chain
of all that lives in anthroposophy: it is the anthroposophical Easter
spirit, which can never in the world believe that the spirit
perishes, but rather that it arises ever and again after dying
through the world; and anthroposophy must hold fast to the spirit
resurrected again and again out of eternal depths.
That is what we
will take into our hearts as the Easter thought, the Easter feeling;
and from this gathering we shall carry away feelings, my dear
friends, that will fill us with courage and strength for work when we
return to our allotted spheres.
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