VI
If we
look back over the evolution of mankind since the Mystery of
Golgotha, we get the impression that Christianity, the Christ
Impulse, has only been able to live on within the European and
American civilisations in the face of definite obstacles and in
association with other streams of spiritual life. And a study of the
growth and gradual development of Christianity reveals many
remarkable facts.
To-day I
want to describe in broad outlines the growth and development of
Christianity in connection with what ought to live within the
Anthroposophical Society: and not only ought to, but can live,
because those persons who feel an honest and sincere urge towards
Anthroposophy, have this urge from the very depths of their
being.
If we
take the facts of repeated earthly lives in all seriousness, we shall
say: This inner urge to get away from the conceptions and habits of
thought of those among whom life, education and social relationships
have placed us, this urge that we feel to enter a stream of thought
which really makes claims upon our life of soul, must have its origin
in karma, in the karma coming from earlier lives on earth.
Now if we
study the question of karma in connection with those personalities
who find themselves together in the Anthroposophical Movement, it
transpires that, without exception, before their present earthly life
they have had one other important incarnation since the Mystery of
Golgotha. They were already on earth once since the time of the
Mystery of Golgotha and are now there for the second time since that
Event.
And then
the great question arises: How has the previous earthly life, with
respect to the Mystery of Golgotha, worked upon these personalities
who now, out of their karma, feel the urge to enter the
Anthroposophical Movement?
Even from
exoteric study we find that men standing as firmly within the stream
of Christianity itself as St. Augustine, have said:
“Christianity did not begin with Christ; there were Christians
before Christ, only they were not so called.” This is what St.
Augustine says.
Those who
penetrate more deeply into the spiritual mysteries of human evolution
and can study these spiritual mysteries with Initiation Science, will
strongly confirm such a view as is expressed by St. Augustine, for it
is a fact. But it becomes necessary, then, to know in what form that
which through the Mystery of Golgotha became the historical Christ
Impulse upon the earth, existed in earlier times.
To-day I
can speak of this earlier form of Christianity by starting from
impressions which came in a place not far distant from Torquay (where
our Summer Course has been held), in Tintagel, whence proceeded the
spiritual stream connected with King Arthur. It was possible to
receive the impressions which can still come to-day at the spot where
King Arthur's castle with its Round Table stood — impressions
which come above all from the magnificent natural surroundings of
this castle.
At this
place where nothing but ruins remain of the old citadel of King
Arthur, where we look back as if in memory across the centuries that
have elapsed since the Arthur stream went out from thence, we realise
how stone after stone has so crumbled away that there is hardly
anything to be recognised of the old castles which once were
inhabited by King Arthur and those around him. But when with the eye
of spirit we look out from the place where the castle once stood,
over the sea with its iridescent colours and breaking waves, the
impression we get is that we are able at this place to penetrate
deeply into the elemental secrets of nature and of the cosmos.
And if we
look back with occult sight, if we can visualise the point of time
which lies a few thousand years ago, when the Arthur stream had its
beginning, then we see that those who lived on Arthur's Mount had, as
is the case with all such occult centres, chosen this spot because
the impulses necessary for the tasks they had set themselves, for
their mission in the world, needed the play of those forces which
nature there displayed before them.
I cannot
say whether it is always so, but when I saw the view there was a most
wonderful play of waves surging and rippling up from the depths
— in itself one of the most beautiful sights in all nature.
These waves hurl themselves against the walls of rock and as they
fall back again in seething foam the elementary spirits are able to
rise up from below and come to living expression. From above, the
sunlight is reflected in manifold forms in the waves of the air. This
interplay of elemental nature from above and from below reveals the
full power of the Sun and displays it in such a way that man is able
to receive it into his being. Those who can imbibe what is given by
this interplay of the beings born of the light above and the beings
born in the depths below, receive the power of the Sun, the impulse
of the Sun. It is a moment in which man can unfold what I will call
“piety” — piety in the pagan sense. Christian piety
is not the same as pagan piety which means inner surrender to the
gods of nature working and weaving everywhere in the play of
nature.
Those who
lived around King Arthur absorbed this play of weaving, working
nature into their very being. And most significant of all was what
they were able to receive in the first centuries after the Mystery of
Golgotha.
I want to
tell you to-day about the character of this spiritual life that was
connected with such centres as that of King Arthur's Round Table. And
I must begin by speaking of something that is known to you all.
When a
human being dies, he leaves his physical body and still has his
etheric body around him for a few days. After these few days have
elapsed he lays aside his etheric body and lives on then in his
astral body and Ego. What happens thus to the man who has passed
through the gate of death, appears to the eye of vision as if the
etheric being were dissolving. After death the etheric human being
expands and expands, his actual form becoming more and more
indefinite as he weaves himself into the cosmos.
A
remarkable phenomenon, and the exact opposite of this other, occurred
in the world-historic sense when the Mystery of Golgotha took place.
What was it that happened then? Up to that time Christ had been a Sun
Being, had belonged to the Sun. Before the Mystery of Golgotha had
come to pass, the Knights of King Arthur's Round Table stood on these
rocks, gazed at the play between the Sun-born spirits and the
Earth-born spirits, and felt that the forces living in this play of
nature-spirits poured into their hearts and above all through their
etheric bodies. Therewith they received into themselves the Christ
Impulse which was then streaming away from the Sun and was living in
everything that is brought into being by the Sun-forces.
And so,
before the Mystery of Golgotha, the Knights of King Arthur received
into themselves the Sun-Spirit, that is to say, the Christ as He was
in pre-Christian times. And they sent their messengers out into all
Europe to subdue the wild savagery of the astral bodies of the
peoples of Europe, to purify and to civilise, for such was their
mission. We see such men as these Knights of King Arthur's Round
Table starting from this point in the West of England to bear to the
peoples of Europe as they were at that time, what they had received
from the Sun, purifying the astral forces of the then barbarous
European population — barbarous at all events in Central and
Northern Europe.
Then came
the Mystery of Golgotha. What happened in Asia? Over yonder in Asia,
the sublime Sun Being, Who was later known as the Christ, left the
Sun. This betokened a kind of death for the Christ Being. He went
forth from the Sun as we human beings go forth from the earth when we
die. And as a man who dies leaves his physical body behind on the
earth and his etheric body which is laid aside after three days is
visible to the seer, so Christ left behind Him in the Sun that which
in my book Theosophy is called “Spirit-Man,” the
seventh member of the human being.
Christ
died to the Sun. He died cosmically, from the Sun to the earth. He
came down to the earth. From the moment of Golgotha onwards His
Life-Spirit was to be seen around the earth. We ourselves leave
behind at death the Life-Ether, the etheric body, the life-body.
After this cosmic Death, Christ left His Spirit-Man on the Sun, and
around the earth, His Life-Spirit. So that after the Mystery
of Golgotha the earth was swathed as it were by the Life-Spirit of
the Christ.
Now the
connections between places are not the same in the spiritual life as
they are in physical life. The Life-Spirit of the Christ was
perceived in the Irish Mysteries, in the Mysteries of Hibernia; and
above all by the Knights of King Arthur's Round Table. So, up to the
time of the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ Impulse belonging to the
Sun actually went out from this place where the impulses were
received from the Sun. Afterwards the power of the Knights diminished
but they lived at the time within this Life-Spirit which encircled
the earth and in which there was this constant interplay of light and
air, of the Spirits in the Elements from above and from below.
Try to
picture to yourselves the cliff with King Arthur's castle upon it and
from above the Sun-forces playing down in the light and air, and
pouring upwards from below the elementary beings of the earth. There
is a living interplay between Sun and earth.
In the
centuries which followed the Mystery of Golgotha this all took place
within the Life-Spirit of the Christ. So that in the play of nature
between sea and rock, air and light, there was revealed, as it were
in spiritual light, the Event of Golgotha.
Understand me rightly, my dear friends. If in the first five
centuries of our era men looked out over the sea, and had been
prepared by the exercises practised by the twelve who were around
King Arthur and who were concerned above all with the Mysteries of
the Zodiac, if they looked out over the sea they could see not merely
the play of nature but they could begin to read a meaning in it just
as one reads a book instead of merely staring at it. And as they
looked and saw, here a gleam of light, there a curling wave, here the
sun mirrored on a rocky cliff, there the sea dashing against the
rocks, it all became a flowing, weaving picture — a truth whose
meaning could be deciphered. And when they deciphered it they knew of
the spiritual Fact of the Mystery of Golgotha. The Mystery of
Golgotha was revealed to them because the picture was all irradiated
by the Life-Spirit of Christ presented to them by nature.
Yonder in
Asia the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place and its impulse had
penetrated deeply into the hearts and souls of men. We need only
think of those who became the first Christians to realise what a
change had come about in their souls. While all this of which I have
been telling you was happening in the West, the Christ Himself, the
Christ Who had come down to earth leaving His Spirit-Man on the Sun
and His Life-Spirit in the atmosphere around the earth, bringing down
His Ego and His Spirit-Self to the earth — the Christ was
moving from East to West in the hearts of men, through Greece,
Northern Africa, Italy, Spain, across Europe. The Christ worked here
in the hearts of men, while over in the West He was working through
nature.
And so on
the one hand we have the story of the Mystery of Golgotha, legible in
the Book of Nature for those who were able to read it, working from
West to East. It represented, as it were, the science of the higher
graduates of King Arthur's Round Table. And on the other hand we have
a stream flowing from East to West, not in wind and wave, in air and
water, not over hills or in the rays of the Sun, but flowing through
the blood, laying hold of the hearts of men on its course from
Palestine through Greece into Italy and Spain.
The one
stream flows through nature; the other through the blood and the
hearts of men. These two streams flow to meet one another. The pagan
stream is still working, even to-day. It bears the pre-Christian
Christ, the Christ Who was proclaimed as a Sun Being by those who
were Knights of the Round Table, but also by many others
before the Mystery of Golgotha actually took place. The
pre-Christian Christ was carried through the world by this stream
even in the age of the Mystery of Golgotha. And a great deal of this
wisdom was carried forth into the world by the stream known as that
of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. It is possible,
even to-day, to discover these things. There is a pagan
Christianity, a Christianity that is not directly bound up with the
actual historical Event of Golgotha.
And
coming upwards to meet this stream there is the form of Christianity
that is connected directly with the Mystery of Golgotha, flowing
through the blood, through the hearts and souls of men. Two streams
come to meet one another — the pre-Christian Christ
stream, etherealised as it were, and the Christian Christ
stream. The one is known, subsequently, as the Arthur stream; the
other as the Grail stream. Later on they came together; they came
together in Europe, above all in the spiritual world.
How can
we describe this movement? The Christ Who descended through the
Mystery of Golgotha drew into the hearts of men. In the hearts of men
He passed from East to West, from Palestine, through Greece, across
Italy and Spain. The Christianity of the Grail spread through the
blood and the hearts of men. The Christ took His way from East to
West.
And to
meet Him from the West there came the spiritual etheric Image
of the Christ — the Image evoked by the Mystery of Golgotha,
but still picturing the Christ of the Sun Mysteries.
Behind
the scenes of world-history, sublime and wonderful events were taking
place. From the West came pagan Christianity, the
Arthur-Christianity, also under other names and in another form. From
the East came the Christ in the hearts of men. And then the meeting
takes place — the meeting between the Christ Who had Himself
come down to earth and His Own Image which is brought to Him from
West to East. This meeting took place in the year 869 A.D. Up to that year we have two streams, clearly
distinct from one another. The one stream, more in the North, passed
across Central Europe and bore the Christ as a Sun Hero, whether the
name were Baldur or some other. And under the banner of Christ, the
Sun Hero, the Knights of Arthur spread their culture abroad.
The other
stream, rooted inwardly in the hearts of men, which later on became
the Grail stream, is to be perceived more in the South, coming from
the East. It bears the real Christ, Christ Himself. The other stream
brings to meet it from the West a cosmic Image of the Christ. This
meeting of Christ with Himself, of Christ the Brother of Humanity
with Christ the Sun Hero Who is there only as it were in an Image
— this meeting of Christ with His own Image took place in the
9th century.
I have
given you here, my dear friends, an idea of the inner happenings
during the first centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha, when, as I
have already said, the souls were living who are now again upon
earth, and who have carried with them from their previous earthly
lives the urge to come in sincerity into the Anthroposophical
Movement. [See: Karmic Relationships, Vol.
III.]
When we
consider this significant Arthur stream from West to East, it appears
to us as the stream which brings the Impulse of the Sun into earthly
civilisation. In this Arthur stream is working and weaving the
Michael stream as we may call it in Christian terminology, the stream
in the spiritual life of humanity in which we have been living since
the end of the seventies of last century. The Ruling Power, known by
the name of Gabriel, who had held sway for three or four centuries in
European civilisation, was succeeded at the end of the seventies of
last century by Michael. And the Rulership of Michael will last for
three to four centuries, weaving and working in the spiritual life of
mankind. And so we have good cause at the present time to speak of
the Michael streams, for we ourselves are living once again in an Age
of Michael.
We find
one of these Michael streams if we look back to the period
immediately preceding that of the Mystery of Golgotha, to the Arthur
Impulse going out from the West, from England, an Impulse which was
kindled originally by the Hibernian Mysteries. And we find a still
more ancient form of this Michael stream if we look back to what
happened centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha, when, taking its
start from Northern Greece, in Macedonia, the international,
cosmopolitan stream connected with the name of Alexander the Great
arose under the influence of the conception of the world that is
known as the Aristotelian. What was achieved through Aristotle and
Alexander in that pre-Christian age took place under the Rulership of
Michael, just as now once again we are living under his Rulership.
The Michael Impulse was there in the spiritual life at the time of
Alexander the Great, just as it is there now, in our own time.
Whenever a Michael Impulse is at work in humanity upon the earth it
is always a time when that which has been founded in a centre of
spiritual culture spreads abroad among many peoples of the earth and
is carried into many regions, wherever it is possible to carry
it.
This came
to pass in pre-Christian times through the campaigns of Alexander.
The achievements of Greek culture were spread among men wherever this
became possible. If one had asked Alexander and Aristotle: Whence
comes your impulse to spread abroad the spiritual culture of your
age? — they would have spoken, though under a different name,
of that same Being, Michael, who works from the Sun as the Servant of
Christ. For among the Archangels who in turn rule over civilisation,
Michael belongs to the Sun. Michael was Ruler in the time of
Alexander and is Ruler again in our own time. The next Ruling
Archangel was Oriphiel, who belongs to Saturn. His successor, the
Archangel Anael, belongs to Venus. While Zachariel, the Archangel who
ruled civilisation in the 4th and 5th centuries, belongs to the
sphere of Jupiter. Then came Raphael, from the Mercury sphere, at the
time when a form of thought connected with medicine and healing lived
in the background of European civilisation. After Raphael came
Samael, whose Rulership extended a little beyond the 12th century.
And then came the Age of Gabriel. Samael belongs to Mars, Gabriel to
the Moon. And Gabriel was once again succeeded by Michael, who
belongs to the Sun sphere, in the seventies of the 19th century. Thus
in rhythmic succession these seven Beings of the Hierarchy of the
Archangels rule over the spiritual life of the earth.
And so as
we look back — when was the last Rulership of Michael? It was
in the Alexander period. It prevailed during that period when Greek
civilisation was carried across to Asia and Africa, and finally
concentrated in the great and influential city of Alexandria with its
mighty heroes of the spiritual life.
It is a
strange vista that presents itself to occult sight. In the age which
lies a few centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha, we see, going
Eastwards from Macedonia — that is to say, once more from West
to East but this time farther to the East — we see the same
stream which proceeds from the English and Irish souls in the West
and which also flows from West to East. During the Alexander period,
Michael was the Ruling Archangel on the earth. During the Arthur
period, when Michael was working from the Sun, the influences I have
described were sent down from the Sun. But what happened later on,
after the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place? What happened to the
kind of thought that had been carried by Alexander the Great over to
Asia?
At the
time when Charlemagne, in his own way, was establishing a certain
form of Christian culture in Europe, Haroun al Raschid was living
over yonder in Asia Minor. All the oriental wisdom and spirituality
to be found at that time in architecture, in art, in science, in
religion, in literature, in poetry — it was all gathered at the
Court of Haroun al Raschid. And at his side there was a Counsellor, a
man who was not initiated in all these arts and sciences at that
time, but who had been an Initiate in earlier times, in a former
life. Around these two men, Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor, we
find that all the wisdom which had been carried by Alexander into
Asia, all the teachings which had been drawn from the old
nature-wisdom and were imparted by Aristotle to those he was able to
instruct — all this was changed. Alexandrianism and
Aristotelianism were permeated and impregnated at the Court of Haroun
al Raschid with Arabism, with Mohammedanism.
And then,
all the learning thus permeated with Arabism was carried over into
the stream of Christianity by way of Greece, but especially by way of
Northern Africa, Italy and Spain. It was carried over, inculcated as
it were into the world of Christendom.
But
before this, Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor had passed through
the gate of death, and from that life which leads from death to a new
birth they looked down on what was taking place on earth in the
expeditions of the Mohammedan Moors to Spain. From the spiritual
world they watched the form of culture which they themselves had
promoted and which had been spread by their successors. Haroun al
Raschid concentrated his attention from the spiritual world more on
the regions of Greece, Italy and Spain; his Counsellor more on the
stream going out from the East across the regions to the North of the
Black Sea, through Russia and into Central Europe.
And now
the question arises: What was the destiny of Alexander and Aristotle
themselves? They were deeply bound up with the Rulership of Michael
but they were not incarnated on the earth at the time of the Mystery
of Golgotha.
We must
try to get a clear conception of the two contrasting pictures. On the
earth are those who were contemporaries of the Mystery of Golgotha.
Christ comes down through the Mystery of Golgotha, becomes Man, and
from then on lives in the earth-sphere. And what is happening on the
Sun? On the Sun there are the souls who at that time belonged to
Michael, who were living in his sphere. These souls witnessed, from
the Sun, the departure of Christ from the Sun and His descent to
earth. On the earth there were those who witnessed His arrival. That
is the difference. The experience of those who were on earth during
the Michael Rulership at the time of Alexander, was that they saw as
it were the other direction of the Christ Event, namely, the
departure of the Christ from the Sun. They live on — I will not
now mention unimportant incarnations — and they experience, in
the spiritual world, that significant point of time in the 9th
century, about the year 869, when there took place the meeting of the
Christ with His own Image, with His own Life-Spirit brought over from
pagan, pre-Christian Christianity.
Another
meeting also took place in the spiritual world, a meeting of the
individualities living in Alexander the Great and in Aristotle with
the individualities who had lived in Haroun al Raschid and his
Counsellor. The wisdom from Asia, in a Mohammedanised form, living in
Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor after their death, came into
contact, in the spiritual world, with Alexander and Aristotle. On the
one side Aristotelianism and Alexandrianism, but impregnated with
Mohammedanism, and on the other, the real Aristotle and the real
Alexander — not a weakened form of their teachings. Alexander
and Aristotle had witnessed the Mystery of Golgotha from the
Sun.
Then a
great spiritual exchange, a great heavenly Council, if one may call
it so, took place in the spiritual world between Mohammedanised
Aristotelianism and Christianised Aristotelianism which had, however,
been imbued in the spiritual world with the Christian Impulse.
In the
spiritual world which borders on our physical earth — it was
here that Alexander and Aristotle met with Haroun al Raschid and his
Counsellor and consulted together as to the further progress of
Christianity in Europe, with an eye to what should come at the end of
the 19th century and in the 20th century, when Michael would again
have the Rulership on earth. This all took place in the light raying
from that other event, namely, the meeting of Christ with His own
Image. That heavenly Council was permeated by the influence of this
meeting. And the lines, the threads of the spiritual life of humanity
were projected with great intensity in the spiritual world which
borders on the physical earth.
Below, on
the earth itself, the Church Fathers gathered together in
Constantinople at the Eighth Ecumenical Council, where they
formulated the dogma that man does not consist of body, soul and
Spirit, but only of body and soul, the soul possessing certain
spiritual attributes. Trichotomy — the definition of man as
body, soul and Spirit — was done away with and anyone who
persisted in believing it was declared to be a heretic. The Christian
Fathers in Europe never spoke of body, soul and Spirit, but only of
body and soul.
The
decisive event which took place in the year 869 in the super-sensible
worlds as I have described it, cast its shadows down into the earthly
world. The Dark Age, the Kali Yuga, received a special impetus, while
what I have just described was taking place above, in the spiritual
world.
Such was
the real course of events. In the physical world the Council of
Constantinople which eliminated the Spirit, and in the world
immediately bordering on the physical, a heavenly Council such as I
have described — coinciding with the meeting of Christ Himself
with His own Image.
But it
was known that it was a question of waiting until the new Michael Age
had dawned on earth. There were, none the less, always a few Teachers
who knew, even though in a somewhat decadent way, something of what
takes place behind the veils of existence. There were always Teachers
who knew how to present, if not always in very apt pictures, the
spiritual content of the world, who could speak of what was happening
in the spiritual world that is so near to the earth. And here and
there these Teachers found ears willing to listen to them. Their
listeners were men who learned something of true Christianity by
catching here and there fragmentary words as to what would come in
the 20th century after the Michael Rulership had begun once
again.
In you
yourselves, my dear friends, are the souls who were in incarnation at
that time and listened to those who spoke of the coming Age of
Michael and whose speech was influenced by impulses coming down from
the heavenly Council of which I have told you.
From
these experiences of a previous life in the early Christian centuries
— not precisely the 9th century but before and after, chiefly
before — arose the subconscious urge, when the Michael
Rulership should be there once more, from the end of the 19th century
onwards, to look for centres where the spiritual life is again
cultivated under the influence of Michael. This impulse was rooted in
the souls of those who had once heard of the teachings, who knew
something of the mysteries of which we have spoken to-day.
And so
the karmic urge lives in souls to find their way to that form of
Christianity which was to be spread by Anthroposophy under the
influence of Michael at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th
centuries. What these souls had experienced in earlier times
expresses itself in this incarnation in the fact that certain of them
find their way to the Anthroposophical Movement.
Knowledge
resulting from a converging of old pre-Christian, cosmic Christianity
with inward Christian doctrines, teachings which were connected with
the spiritual workings of nature and yet also with the Mystery of
Golgotha, continued to be taught on earth at the time when those
souls who now in this later incarnation feel themselves drawn to
Anthroposophy had passed through the gates of death and were living
in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. Some of them
indeed came down to incarnation on the earth. The ancient teachings,
with their cosmic view of Christianity, lived on, propagating
traditions of the Mysteries of antiquity. This knowledge lived on in
Schools in Europe like that of Chartres in the 12th century, with its
great Teachers — Bernardus Sylvestris, Alanus ab Insulis and
others. And the teachings lived and worked too in the great teacher
of Dante, Brunetto Latini, of whom I spoke to you in the last
lecture. In this way we see how there is a continuation of the
knowledge in which there was still connection between cosmic
Christianity and the purely human, earthly Christianity which more
and more gained the supremacy on earth.
The
Council held in Constantinople was an earthly, shadow-image of
something that took place in the spiritual world. A constant
connection was maintained between what was proceeding in the physical
world and in the immediately adjacent spiritual world. And because of
this, the most illustrious Teachers of Chartres felt themselves
inspired by the true Alexander and the true Aristotle, although in a
still stronger way by Plato and by the Platonic and Neo-Platonic
thought which prevailed in the mysticism of the Middle Ages.
Something
of great significance now took place. Those who had grouped
themselves around Michael, and who had for the most part been
incarnated at the time of Alexander, were now living in the spiritual
world. Looking down from thence they saw how Christianity was
evolving under the Teachers of Chartres. But they waited until these
Teachers — who were the last who taught of Christianity in its
cosmic aspect — they waited until these Teachers of Chartres
had come up into the spiritual world. And at a certain point of time,
at the end of the 12th and beginning of the 13th centuries, there
gathered together in the spiritual sphere bordering on cur earth, the
more definitely Platonic Teachers of Chartres and those who had in
some way taken part in the heavenly Council in the year 869. There
took place — if I may use trivial words of earth to describe
such a sublime event — a kind of conference between the
Teachers of Chartres who had just ascended into the spiritual world
and were now to continue their existence there, and those who were on
the point of descending to earth, among them the individualities of
Alexander and Aristotle, who immediately afterwards incarnated in the
Dominican Order. And then, in a body of teaching that is so
misunderstood to-day but the deep significance of which ought to be
realised, in Scholasticism, preparation was made for all that was to
come later on in the next Age of Michael.
And now,
in order that they might enter right into the heart of Christianity,
the souls who belonged to the sphere of Michael, who had lived in the
old Alexander time, who had not lived on earth during the first
Christian centuries, or at least only in unimportant incarnations
— these souls now came into incarnation in order to imbibe
Christianity in the Dominican or other Orders, but mainly in the
Dominican Order. Again they passed through the gate of death and
continued their existence in the spiritual world.
In the
15th century and lasting on into the 16th — and it must be
remembered that time-relationships are quite different in the
spiritual world — there took place in the super-sensible world
the great process of instruction instituted by Michael himself for
those who belonged to him. A great super-sensible School was founded,
a School in which Michael himself was the Teacher and in which those
souls took part who had been inspired by the impulses of the
Alexander Age and had later steeped themselves in Christianity in the
manner described. All the discarnate souls who belonged to Michael
took part in this great School in the super-sensible world during the
14th, 15th and 16th centuries. All the Beings of the Hierarchy of
Angels, Archangels and Archai who belonged to the Michael stream, as
well as many elementary beings, also took part in it.
In this
super-sensible School, a wonderful review was given of the wisdom of
the ancient Mysteries. Detailed knowledge in regard to the ancient
Mysteries was imparted to the souls partaking in this School. They
looked back to the Sun Mysteries, to the Mysteries of the other
planets. But a vista of the future was given too, a vista of what
should begin at the end of the 19th century in the new Age of
Michael. All this passed through these souls who now, in the present
Michael Age, feel drawn to the Anthroposophical Movement.
Meanwhile, on earth, the last bout of the struggle was taking place.
Haroun al Raschid had incarnated again as Lord Bacon of Verulam and
in this new incarnation had set the impulse of materialism on foot.
The universality in the teachings of Bacon, but also his materialism,
came from his incarnation as Haroun al Raschid. Bacon was the
reincarnated Haroun al Raschid. The Counsellor, who had taken the
other path, incarnated in the same epoch, as Amos Comenius.
And so
while Christianity illumined by Aristotelian and Alexandrian thought
was going through its most important phase of development in the
super-sensible worlds during the 14th, 15th, 16th and 17th centuries
— during this very same period we find materialism being
established on earth in the minds of men, established in science by
Bacon, the reincarnated Haroun al Raschid, and in the realm of
education by Amos Comenius, the reincarnated Counsellor of Haroun al
Raschid. The two souls worked together.
When Amos
Comenius and Bacon had once again passed through the gate of death, a
remarkable thing came to pass in the spiritual world. After Bacon had
passed through the gate of death, it happened that because of the
particular mode of thinking he had adopted in his incarnation as
Bacon, a whole world of “idols,” demonic idols, went
forth from his etheric body, and spread themselves out in the
spiritual world which was peopled by those who were the pupils of
Michael.
As I have
shown in my first Mystery Play, things that happen on earth work
powerfully into the spiritual world. Bacon's mode of thinking on the
earth worked so shatteringly into the spiritual world that it was
flooded by a whole host of “idols.”
And the
materialistic form of educational science inaugurated by Amos
Comenius provided the sphere, the cosmic atmosphere, as it were, for
the idols of Bacon. Bacon provided the idols; and just as we human
beings have around us the mineral and plant kingdoms, so these idols
of Bacon were surrounded by other kingdoms which were necessary to
their existence. And these were provided by what Amos Comenius had
instituted on earth.
The
individualities who had once lived on the earth as Alexander and
Aristotle set themselves to fight these demonic idols. And the
conflict continued until the time when the French Revolution broke
out on the earth.
The
idols, the demonic idols which it had not been possible to overcome,
which had as it were escaped from the fight, descended to earth and
became the inspiring forces of the materialism of the 19th century
with its many consequences. These forces are the inspirers of the
materialism of the 19th century.
The souls
who had remained behind, who with the assistance of the
individualities of Aristotle and Alexander had profited by the
teaching of Michael, came back to earth, bearing the impulses I have
described, towards the end of the 19th century and the beginning of
the 20th. And many of these souls can be recognised in those who come
to the Anthroposophical Movement. Such is the karma of those who come
to the Movement with inner sincerity.
It is a
shattering experience to hear of what is happening immediately behind
the events in the outer world at the present time. But it is
something which, under the impulse of the Christmas Foundation at the
Goetheanum must be implanted in the hearts and souls of those who
call themselves Anthroposophists. It must live in their hearts and
souls, and it will give them the strength to work on, for those who
are Anthroposophists to-day in the true sense will feel a strong urge
to come down again to the earth very soon. And with a faculty of
prophecy connected with the Michael Impulse, it can be foreseen that
many anthroposophical souls will come again to the earth at the end
of the 20th century in order to bring to full realisation the
Anthroposophical Movement which must now be established on a firm and
sure foundation.
Every
Anthroposophist should be moved by this knowledge: “I have in
me the impulse of Anthroposophy. I recognise it as the Michael
Impulse. I wait and am strengthened in my waiting by true activity in
Anthroposophy at the present time in order that after the short
interval allotted in the 20th century to anthroposophical souls
between death and a new birth, I may come again at the end of the
century to promote the Movement with much more spiritual power. I am
preparing for the new Age leading from the 20th into the 21st
century” ... It is thus that a true Anthroposophist speaks.
Many forces of destruction are at work upon the earth! All culture,
all civilised life must fall into decadence if the spirituality of
the Michael Impulse does not so lay hold of men that they are capable
of bringing upliftment to the civilisation that is hurrying
downhill.
If there
are to be found truly anthroposophical souls, willing to bring this
spirituality into earthly life, then there will be a movement leading
upwards. If such souls are not found, decadence will continue
to spread. The great War, with all its attendant evils, will be
merely the beginning of still worse evils.
Human
beings to-day are facing a great crisis. Either they must see
civilisation going down into the abyss, or they must raise it by
spirituality and promote it in the sense of the Michael Impulse.
That, my
dear friends, is what I had to say to you on this occasion and my
desire is that it shall work on and bear fruit in your souls. For as
I have often said at the conclusion of a happy and satisfying visit,
when we have worked together for a time, we know, as
Anthroposophists, that it is our karma to have been able to do so. We
know too that we still remain united, even when divided in physical
space. We shall remain united in the signs that can reveal themselves
to the eyes of spirit and to the ears of soul if what I have said in
these lectures has been received in full earnestness and has been
understood.
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