SIXTH
LECTURE:
JANUARY 2, 1914
In the preceding lecture I tried to present what I had
to tell you about the Mystery of the Grail and its connections in
such a way as to let you see how these things reveal themselves
gradually to the seeker's soul. I have not withheld the various
difficulties that must be gone through before that which may be
called the result of research is given to the soul from out of the
spiritual world. Of course I know very well that if modern
psychology, which remains so superficial, gets hold of such
descriptions, it will bring forward all possible — or rather
the most impossible — objections. And I am well aware of all
the doubts that can be raised, the curious assertions about all sorts
of laws and associations of ideas and subconscious images. In spite
of all this — and precisely in full consciousness of it —
I have for once given you this unvarnished account, because for you,
as anthroposophists, it should be important to be clear that the
results to which one has to come in spiritual research are to be
reached only after overcoming all the things which, as I told you
yesterday, stand in the way. And the final result of spiritual
research is not the outcome of ideas that have been put together, as
might be supposed. For these ideas are like messengers leading to the
final result and have nothing to do with the result itself.
I wanted to make these preliminary remarks because the
latest publications show what happens again and again when these
expositions are printed as lecture-courses. They are given to people
outside our Movement, who then make the most senseless remarks about
them and of course take pleasure in quoting from them out of context
and so on. And let me also say — without the least wish to
appear presumptuous — that because of our Movement a time has
come when someone or other may think it profitable to attack us. And
we can be sure that for such a purpose any means would serve.
I have said that the stellar script is to be found in
the heavens, but it is not in any sense the Grail and it does not
yield us the Grail. I have expressly emphasised — and I beg you
to take this emphasis very seriously — that the name of
the Grail is to be found through the stellar script, not the Grail
itself. I have pointed to the fact that in the gold-gleaming sickle
of the moon — as any close observer can see — the dark
part of the moon emerges and is as though marked off from the bright
sickle; and there, in occult writing, is to be found the name of
Parsifal.
Now before we go further and try to interpret this sign
in the heavens, I must draw your attention to an important law, an
important fact. The gold-gleaming sickle becomes apparent because the
physical rays of the sun fall on the moon. The illuminated part of
the moon shines out as the gold-gleaming vessel. Within it rests the
dark Host: physically, this is the dark part not reached by the sun's
rays; spiritually, there is something else. When the rays of the sun
fall on part of the moon and are reflected in gleaming light,
something does nevertheless pass through the physical matter. This
something is the spiritual element that lives in the sun's
rays. The spiritual power of the sun is not held back and reflected,
as the sun's physical power is; it goes through; and because it
is resisted by the power of the moon, what we see at rest in the
golden vessel is actually the spiritual power of the sun. So we can
say: In the dark part of the moon we are looking at the spiritual
power of the sun. In the gold-gleaming part, the vessel, we see
reflected the physical power of the sun. The Spirit of the sun rests
in the vessel of the sun's physical power. So in truth the
Spirit of the sun rests in the vessel of the moon. And if we now
recollect all that we have ever said about this Sun-spirit in
relation to the Christ, then in what the moon does physically an
important symbol will be manifest. Because the moon reflects the
sun's rays and in this way brings into being the gold-gleaming
vessel, it appears to us as the bearer of the Sun-spirit, for the
Sun-spirit appears within the moon's vessel in the form of the
wafer-like disc.
And let us remember that in the Parsifal saga it is
emphasised that on every Good Friday, and thus during the Easter
festival, the Host descends from Heaven into the Grail and is
renewed; it sinks into the Grail like a rejuvenating nourishment —
at the Easter festival, when Parsifal is again directed towards the
Grail by the hermit; at the Easter festival, whose significance for
the Grail has also been brought nearer to mankind again through
Wagner's Parsifal.
Now let us recall how in accordance with an old
tradition — one of those traditions of which I spoke yesterday
as having arisen from the working of the Christ Impulse in the depths
of the soul — the date of the Easter festival was established.
Which is the day appointed for the Easter festival? The day when the
vernal sun, which means the sun that is gathering strength —
our symbol for the Christ — reaches the first Sunday after the
full moon. How does the vernal full moon stand in the heavens at the
Easter festival — how must it stand? It must begin, at least a
little, to become a sickle. Something must be visible of the dark
part; something of the Sun-spirit, Who has gained his vernal
strength, must be within it. This means that, according to an ancient
tradition, the picture of the Holy Grail must appear in the heavens
at the Easter festival. It must be so. At the Easter festival,
therefore, everyone can see this picture of the Holy Grail. According
to a very ancient tradition, the date of the Easter festival is
regulated with this in view.
Now let us try again to get our bearings with regard to
developments that have taken their course below the surface of
soul-life. Yesterday we said that the force which emerged in the
Sibyls had to be moderated; it had to be permeated by the Christ
Impulse; and in this moderated form it had to reappear, so that it
might become the bearer of spiritual culture in later times. Now let
us ask: Was Parsifal — as Chrestien de Troyes calls him —
able to perceive in himself something of the Christ Impulse at work
in the depths of his soul?
If we look back once more at the primal character of the
ancient Hebrew Geology, one thing strikes us again and again. We
shall grasp the spirit of this ancient Hebrew Geology only if we
realise that the whole of Hebrew antiquity tried with all its might
to hold fast to the geological character of its revelations. I have
shown how these revelations must be looked for, and can everywhere be
traced, in the activities and spiritual mobility of the Earth. The
Hebrew endeavour was to keep at bay the elemental activities that
derive from the stars and served to stimulate spiritually the power
of the Sibyls. The influence of the stars was justified in the
Astrology of the third post-Atlantean epoch, for humanity then
retained so much of the old ancestral spirituality that when men
devoted their souls to the elements, they absorbed a good influence
from the stars.
During the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, the power of the
stars receded in face of the elements which surround the Earth in the
atmosphere and everywhere else. The influx of the elements was felt
in such a way that anyone who understood the spirit of the age,
especially as the fourth epoch advanced further and further, was
constrained to say to himself: “Let us guard ourselves against
the influence that plays into the elements from the stars: it
produces something like the unlawful Sibylline forces.” Through
the Christ Impulse having poured itself out into the Earth's
aura, the Sibylline forces were to be harmonised and rendered capable
of again yielding lawful revelations. Never willingly did the true
initiate of Hebrew antiquity look to the stars when he wished for a
revelation of the spirit. He had vowed himself to the Jahve-god who
belongs to the evolution of the Earth and (as I have shown in
Occult Science)
had become a moon god only in order to help the Earth forward.
In the moon festivals of the Jews it was made clear that
the ‘Lord of the Earth’ shines down symbolically in his
reflection from the moon. “But go no further” —
that was the warning given by old Hebrew tradition to the pupil —
“Go no further! Be content with what Jahve reveals in his moon
symbol — go no further! The time has not yet come for drawing
out of the elements anything more than is expressed in the moon
symbol. Anything more would belong to the unlawful Sibylline forces.”
When all that has come over into Earth evolution from
the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods is grasped in its natural aspect,
then we find it symbolised in the old Hebrew tradition through Eve.
Eve — the vowels are never clearly pronounced — Eve! Add
to it the sign for the divine Being of Hebrew antiquity who is the
Ruler of Earth-history, and we have a form which is quite as valid as
any other — Jehve-Jahve, the ruler of the Earth who has his
symbol in the moon. If we bring this into conjunction with what has
come over from the Moon period and with its outcome for Earth
evolution, we have the Ruler of the Earth united with the Earth
Mother, whose powers are a result of the Moon period ... Jahve! Hence
out of Hebrew antiquity there emerges this mysterious connection of
the Moon forces, which have left their remains in the moon known to
astronomy and their human forces in the female element in human life.
The connection of the Ruler of the Earth with the Moon Mother is
given to us in the name Jahve.
Now I should like to bring before you two facts which
will perhaps indicate how, under the influence of the Christ Impulse,
the Sibylline forces have been transformed in the subconscious depths
of soul-life. I want to touch on a manifestation to which I called
attention three years ago — three years almost to the day —
the transformation of a Sibyl under the influence of the Christ
Impulse. In the lectures printed under the title of
Occult History: Personalities and Events in the Light of Spiritual Science,
[See
Lectures II and III of this Course.] I
referred to the appearance of the Maid of Orleans. I pointed out how
events of the greatest importance for the destiny of Europe in the
subsequent era flowed from what the Maid of Orleans accomplished
under the influence of her inspirations, fully permeated by the
Christ Impulse, beginning in the autumn of 1428. From external
history one can indeed learn that the destiny of Europe would have
been very different if the Maid of Orleans had not appeared when she
did, and only an entirely obsessed materialist, such as Anatole
France, can deny that something mysterious came into history at that
time.
I will not repeat here what can be read in history
books; anyone who has listened to these lectures can see that
something like a modern Sibyl emerged in the Maid of Orleans. It was
the time — the fifteenth century — when the fifth
post-Atlantean epoch begins; a time when the Christ Impulse had to
emerge more and more from the subconscious depths of the soul. We can
see in what a gentle, tender form, imbued with the noblest qualities
of the human soul, the Sibylline power of the Maid of Orleans is
revealed. I would like to take this opportunity of reading to you a
letter written by a man who lived through these events, for it shows
what an impression the Sibylline power of the Maid of Orleans made on
those who had a heart and feeling for it. He was a man in the
entourage of the King whom the Maid of Orleans liberated. After
describing her achievements, he writes:
“This and much more has the Maid brought about,
and with God's help she will accomplish still greater things.
The girl is of appealing beauty and manly bearing; she speaks little
and shows remarkable sagacity; when she speaks she has a pleasing,
delicately feminine voice. She eats little and abstains from wine.
She takes pleasure in fine horses and weapons and admires
well-accoutered and noble men. To be obliged to meet and converse
with large numbers of people is abhorrent to her; her tears often
overflow; she loves a happy face, endures unheard of toil, and is so
assiduous in the manipulation and bearing of weapons that she remains
uninterruptedly for six days — day and night — in full
armour. She says that the English have no right to France, and
therefore — as she says — God has sent her to drive them
out and conquer them, but only after previous warning. For the King
she shows the deepest veneration; she says he is beloved by God, is
under special protection, and will therefore be preserved. Of the
Duke of Orleans, your nephew, she says that he will be delivered in a
miraculous way, but only after a demand for his release has been made
to the English who hold him prisoner.
With that, revered Duke, I bring my report to a
conclusion. Still more wonderful things are happening and have
happened than I can write of or describe to you in words. While I
write this, the aforesaid Maid has already gone to the neighbourhood
of the city of Rheims in Champagne, whither the King has hastily set
off for his anointing and crowning under God's protection. Most
respected and powerful Duke and greatly honoured master! I commend
myself to you in all humility, while praying the Almighty to protect
you and fulfil your desires. Written at Biteromis, the 21st day of
June (in the year 1429).
Your humble servant
Percival,
Lord of Bonlamiulk, Counselor and Chamberlain of the
King of the French and of the Duke of Orleans, Seneschal of Berry.”
So wrote a Percival to the Duke of Milan about the Maid.
Anyone reading it will feel how we have here a description of a
Christ-filled Sibyl.
That is one thing: the other to which I wish to call
your attention is also a fact from the new times that the fifth
post-Atlantean epoch brought in. It is something written by a man
who, one might say, was justified in feeling himself permeated with
the spirit of this new epoch — so much so that what he
experienced unconsciously might be expressed as follows: ‘Yes,
a time is coming when the old Astrology will live again in a new
form, a Christ-filled form, and then, if one can practise it
properly, so that it will be permeated with the Christ Impulse, one
may venture to look up to the stars and question them about their
spiritual script.’ Here was a man — as you will shortly
see — who felt deeply that the Earth is not as modern
materialistic geology portrays it, purely physical and mineral, but a
living being, endowed not merely with a body, as the modern
materialist wants us to believe, but also with a soul. He knew this
in such a way that he could feel something like the following
(although he could not have expressed it in these words, since the
Spiritual Science of today was not then available): ‘The Christ
Impulse has been received by the Earth-soul into its aura, and so a
man whose soul feels imbued with the Earth's aura, and with the
Christ Impulse, may again look up to what is written in the stars.’
And in fact this was done; men did look up to the stars. Although
this approach brought with it a great deal of superstition,
especially among the old astronomers who appeared at that time, yet
we find a certain man, deeply bound up with the spiritual life of the
new epoch, writing in this way:
“These and countless other changes and phenomena
which take place on the earth are so exact and regular that they
cannot be ascribed to a blind cause, and since the planets themselves
know nothing of the angles which their rays make with the earth, the
earth must have a soul. The earth is an animal.” [He does not
mean an animal in the ordinary sense, but a living organism.] “One
can observe in the earth a complete analogy with the parts of an
animal body. Plants are its hair; metals are its veins; the waters of
the sea are its drink. The earth has a formative power, a kind of
imagination; it has movement, certain illnesses, and ebb and flow are
its respirations. The soul of the earth seems to be a kind of flame;
hence the subterranean warmth and the fact that without warmth there
is no propagation. A certain image of the Zodiac and of the whole
firmament is imprinted by God in the soul of the earth.
“This is the bond between the heavens and the
earth, the cause of sympathy between heaven and earth; the archetypes
of all these movements and functions are implanted by God the Creator
in the earth. The soul is in the centre of the earth; it sends out
forms or impressions of itself in all directions, and in this way
experiences all harmonious changes and objects outside itself. As it
is with the soul of the earth, so is it with the soul of man. All
mathematical ideas and proofs, for example, are created by the soul
from out of itself, or they would not have such a high degree of
certainty and precision.
“The planets and their aspects have influence on
the soul-powers of men. They stir up emotions and passions of all
kinds, leading often to the most terrible actions and events. They
have influence on conception, and therefore on human temperament and
character; a great part of astrology has to do with this. Probably
the sun does not only radiate light and warmth throughout the cosmos;
it may also be the seat and centre of pure reason and the source of
universal harmony. And all the planets are ensouled.
“In the whole creation there is a magnificent and
wonderful harmony, in the realm of the senses as well as in the
super-sensible, in ideas as well as in things, in the kingdoms of
nature and in the gifts of Grace. This harmony is found both in
things themselves and in the relations between them. The highest
harmony is God, and He has impressed on all souls an inner harmony as
his signature. Numbers, shapes, the stars and nature in general,
harmonise with certain mysteries of the Christian religion. Thus for
example in the cosmos there are three things at rest, the sun, the
fixed stars and the intermedium, and all else is in movement; and so
in the one God are Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The sphere represents
the Trinity: the Father is the centre, the Son the surface, and the
Holy Spirit the uniformity of the distance from centre to surface
(the radius); and so it is with other mysteries. Without spirits and
souls there would not be harmony everywhere. In human souls we find
harmonious pre-dispositions of an endlessly varied kind. The whole
earth is ensouled, and thus the great harmony is brought about, not
only on earth but between the earth and the constellations. This soul
works throughout the body of the earth, but it has its seat in a
particular place, just as the human soul has its seat in the heart;
and from this place, as though from a focus or source, its workings
go out into the ocean and the atmosphere. Hence the sympathy between
the earth and the stars; hence the regularity of nature's
processes. The fact that the earth truly has a soul is shown most
clearly by observing weather conditions and the aspects under which
they habitually occur. Under certain aspects and constellations the
air is always restless; if such aspects are not present, or are few
or transient, the air remains quiet.”
Thus wrote a man in 1607; a man in whom lived and
pulsed, as the new age came in, the Christ-filled Astrology which
draws after it, merely as its shadow, astrological superstition. Thus
wrote a man out of the most devout mood of soul; a man who knew that
people had formerly made use — at first rightly and afterwards
wrongly — of the forces that spring from the elemental world,
the Sibylline forces we should now call them. For it cannot be
denied, he wrote, that such spirits — he means spirits which
maintain communication between the stars and the earth —
establish themselves in the elements which surround the earth as its
atmosphere. He continues:
“It cannot be denied that such spirits formerly
imparted their oracular sayings to men through idols and oak-trees,
out of groves and grottoes, through animals and so on; and
sooth-saying from the flight of birds was not merely an art of
deceiving the weak. Those spirits were active in guiding the birds
through the air, and by this means, with God's permission, much
was intimated to men in former times. Even today we hear stories of
fateful birds, such as owls, vultures, eagles, ravens, but the more
such stories are despised, the rarer they become. For these spirits
cannot bear being despised, as according to the law of God and
Christian teaching, they certainly deserve to be: they prefer to fly
away and keep silent. From the beginning the lying Tempter was
allowed to speak through animals: he spoke to Eve through the serpent
and thus he led the human race astray. That was always the way of
these spirits from then onwards: whenever they could speak to men
through the bodies and movements of animals, through voices or
portents, they misused this power, appropriating for themselves the
reverence due to God and misleading unhappy men. And now, although
Christ came to destroy the work of the Devil, and imposed silence on
these spirits, and although they lost their temple-statues, their
groves and their caves and the earth they had so long possessed, yet
they are always here still in the empty air, and with God's
permission they utter their scattered cries. Often they are God's
scourges; often he allows certain things to be announced through them
to men.”
The author of these words gives a gentle indication of
how the spiritual revelations come to be permeated by Christ, for he
writes in a frame of mind that can truly be called Christ-filled. In
1607 he spoke thus of the changes that had come about in the
spiritual world. Who is this man? Is he someone who has no right to
speak, someone we can leave unheard? No, for without him we should
have no modern Astronomy or Physics: he is Johannes Kepler. And
one would like to advise those who call themselves materialists or
monists and look to Kepler as their idol — one would like to
advise them to consider carefully, just for once, this passage in
Kepler's writings. The greatest astronomical laws, the three
Kepler laws, which dominate present-day Astronomy, are his. Yet you
have heard how he speaks of the new influence which gradually enters
into Earth evolution with the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. We must all
again get accustomed by degrees — having thoroughly absorbed
the new influence — to recognise something of the spiritual
activities connected with the stars.
What sort of time was it, then, when Parsifal entered
the Grail Castle, still ignorant, not ready to ask questions —
according to the later tradition taken up by Wolfram von Eschenbach?
What sort of time was it when Parsifal entered the Castle, where
Amfortas lay wounded and on Parsifal's arrival suffered
unceasing pain from his wound? What was this time? The saga itself
tells us — it was a Saturn time. [i.e.,
a period when the forces of Saturn work with particular strength.]
Saturn and the Sun stood together in Cancer, approaching culmination.
So we see how in the most intimate effects a connection between the
Earth and the Stars is established. It was a Saturn time!
And if we now ask how Parsifal gradually gains
knowledge, what do we find? Who is he, this Parsifal? He is ignorant
of certain things; he is held to be ignorant — but of what? Now
we have heard that the Christ Impulse flows on as though through
subterranean channels in the depths of the soul. Up above, the
theological controversies go on, and from them traditional
Christianity takes shape. Let us follow the personality of Parsifal,
as the saga portrays him. He knows nothing about the surface course
of events; he is kept in ignorance precisely of all that. He is
protected from it. What he learns to know comes from sources active
in the depths of the soul, as we heard yesterday. At first, riding
away in ignorance from the Grail Castle, he learns it from the woman
who mourns the dead bridegroom in her lap; then from the hermit, who
is brought into connection with mystic powers; and from the power of
the Grail, for it is on a Good Friday that he comes to the hermit;
already the power of the Grail is working in him unconsciously. Thus
he is one of those who know nothing of what has been going on
externally; one of those who are led into relation with the
influences flowing from unconscious sources to meet the new age. He
is a man whose heart and soul were to receive in innocence,
undisturbed by the effects of the external world on human life, the
secret of the Grail. He is to receive the secret with the highest,
purest, noblest forces of the soul. He has to meet someone who has
not developed the soul-forces which could completely experience the
Grail: he has to meet Amfortas. We know that Amfortas had indeed been
marked out as the Guardian of the Grail, but he succumbed to the
lower forces in human nature. And how he had succumbed is connected
with the Guardianship of the Grail: he had killed his adversary out
of lust and jealousy. These things are obvious, but as they are
repeatedly misunderstood it must be said that Anthroposophy does not
teach asceticism. Something much deeper lies behind.
As late as the third post-Atlantean epoch there were
natural elemental forces which were taken into consideration not so
much for the way in which they were expressed in daily life as for
the connection they revealed with the spiritual world. The elemental
forces that pulsed in the human blood and nervous system were raised
into a relationship with the Mysteries. It was not a question of
subjecting the senses to ascetic discipline, but of becoming aware of
the Holy Mysteries. In the third post-Atlantean epoch one could still
come to the Mysteries with the same forces which otherwise dominate
men on Earth. But the time was at hand when the Holy Mysteries were
to be revealed only to the pure and blameless forces of the soul;
when men would find the possibility of rising above the bonds which
tie them to an earthly calling. Anthroposophy does not seek to
estrange anyone from the Earth; but it was then a question of raising
oneself above those earthly ties and from the influence of the old
Astrology. A man had to raise himself if he was to find the old
Mysteries in the new way — with the powers of the innocent soul
which had freed itself from everything earthly.
Over against the contrast set up by Hebrew antiquity,
another contrast had to be created. Hebrew antiquity had rigorously
insisted: “Nothing of the Sibylline forces, which were
justified at one time in Astrology — nothing of them! Let us
cleave to our earth-god, Jahve!” From this came a denial of all
revelations from above and an acceptance of revelations from below; a
fear of all that reveals itself from the heavens. This outlook had to
prevail on Earth for a season; a certain opposition to anything that
came from above had to establish itself. And in such forces as those
of the Sibyls people saw the unlawful Luciferic forces coming from
above. But presently, after the Christ had descended into the body of
Jesus of Nazareth, that which came from above was imbued with the
Christ Impulse; men could venture again to look up to the heavens.
And something else had come about through the union of the Ruler of
Earth with the Moon-Mother. For the Christ, Who had poured Himself
out into the Earth's aura, had become the Lord of the Earth.
Worldly concerns, such as were pursued at the court of
King Arthur, [See
Cosmic Christianity and the Impulse of Michael,
lectures III and VI.
Given by Dr. Steiner in Torquay and London, August 1924.]
could be approached with earthly forces, but it was not permitted to
approach the concerns of the Holy Grail in this way, as Amfortas had
found. Anyone who attempted it was bound to suffer pain. And since
the working of the stars had been permeated by the Christ, a man had
to be found who had remained untouched by the controversies in the
external world, and through his karma stood at a point where his soul
could be approached by Christ; a man, too, who was related to the
forces indicated by the symbol of the Saturn time, with Saturn and
the Sun standing together in the sign of Cancer. So it was that
Parsifal, in whom the Christ Impulse was still working unconsciously,
in the depths of his soul, comes with the power of Saturn; and the
wound burns as it had never burnt before.
Thus we see how the new age declares itself; how the
soul of Parsifal is related to the new, subconscious, historical
impulse permeated by the Christ aura, the Christ Impulse, although he
knows nothing of it. But the forces which had guided human history
from below the surface were gradually to emerge; and Parsifal,
accordingly, had to come by degrees to understand something that will
never be understood unless it is approached with the pure and
blameless forces of the soul, and not with traditional knowledge and
scholarship. Then we can see — for this has by now come to the
surface and is almost as familiar as the name of the Holy Grail
itself — how it represents the renewing in a different form of
what ancient Hebraism had fought in its day.
Let us set before us the Virgin Mother with the Christ
upon her knees and let us then express it thus: He who can feel the
holiness of this picture will feel the same for the Holy Grail. Above
all other lights, all other gods, shines the Holy Vessel — the
Moon-Mother now touched by Christ, the new Eve, the bearer of the
Sun-spirit, Christ.
Think of the “what”, but still more of the
“how”! And let us look into the soul of Parsifal: how,
riding out from the Grail Castle, he encounters the sight of the
bride and bridegroom, which brings him into connection with
subconscious Christ forces. Let us look how the hermit at Eastertide,
when the picture of the Grail is written in the heavens, in the
stellar script, gives instruction to Parsifal's pure soul. Let
us follow him as he rides on — as I emphasised yesterday —
by day and night, looking at Nature by day and with the symbol of the
Holy Grail often before him at night; how he rides on, having before
him the gold-gleaming sickle of the moon, with the Host, the Christ
Spirit, the Sun-spirit, within it. Let us see how on his way he is
made ready to understand the secret of the Holy Grail by the
concordance between the picture of the Virgin Mother with her
bridegroom Son and the sign of the heavenly script.
Let us see how the permeation of the Earth's
destiny with the Christ Impulse works together in his soul with the
stellar script which has to be made new; let us see how all that is
permeated with Christ is related to the forces of the stars. ... Since
Parsifal had to enter the, Grail Castle at a Saturn time, it was
inevitable that the wounds of the man, Amfortas, who had failed to
abide rightly by the Grail should burn more fiercely.
Think of the “what”, but still more of the
“how”! For it is not a question of characterising such
things with the words I have been using, or with any words. There is
no way of approach to the Grail through words of any kind, or through
philosophical speculations. The only way is by changing all these
words into feeling, by becoming able to feel in the Grail the sum of
all that is holy, by feeling the confluence of that which came over
from the Moon period, appearing first in the Earth Mother, Eve, and
then newly in the Virgin Mother; of the Jahve-god who became Ruler of
the Earth, and of the coming of the Christ Being, Who poured Himself
into the Earth's aura and became the new Lord of the Earth; by
feeling the confluence of that which works down from the stars, and
is symbolised in the stellar script, with human evolution on Earth.
If one takes all this into account and feels it as the consonance of
human history with the stellar script, then one also grasps the
secret that was to be expressed in the words entrusted to Parsifal in
the saga: that whenever a King of the Grail, a truly appointed
Guardian of the Grail, dies, the name of his accredited successor
appears on the Holy Grail. “There it is to be read” —
which means that it will be necessary to learn to read the stellar
script again in a new form.
Let us try to make ourselves worthy to do this; let us
try to read the stellar script in the form now given to us. For in
fact it is nothing else than a reading of the script when we try to
trace out human evolution through the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods,
right up to the Vulcan period. But we must recognise in what
connection we wish to decipher the stellar script today. Let us make
ourselves worthy of it! For not in vain are we told that the Grail
was at first carried away from its own place and for a season was not
externally perceptible. Let us regard what we are permitted to study
in our Anthroposophy as a renewed seeking for the Grail, and let us
try to learn to understand the significance of that which formerly
spoke as though out of the subconscious depths of the soul and rose
gradually into the consciousness of men. Let us try to transform that
by degrees into a new and more conscious language! Let us try to
explore a wisdom which will disclose to us the connection between the
earthly and the heavenly, not relying on old traditions, but in
accordance with the way in which it can be revealed today.
And then let us be filled with a feeling of how it was
that Parsifal came to the secret of the Grail. Afterwards the secret
was kept hidden again, because men had first to seek for the
connection of the Earth with cosmic powers in the most external
field, the field of the most external science. Let us also understand
how it was that a spirit such as Kepler's could in the meantime
come to grasp what he set out in his mathematical-mechanical laws of
the heavens; but what he added to this, being truly penetrated with
the Christ Impulse, had to sink back into the subconscious depths of
the soul. When we express what we know how to say today about our
Earth-evolution and its connection with the Cosmos, we are speaking
in Kepler's sense. Thus we have heard him say:
“Thus for example in the cosmos there are three
things at rest, the sun, the fixed stars and the inter-medium, and
all else is in movement; and so in the one God are Father, Son and
Holy Spirit. The sphere represents the Trinity: the Father is the
centre, the Son the surface, and the Holy Spirit the uniformity of
the distance from centre to surface (the radius); and so it is with
other mysteries. Without spirits and souls there would not be harmony
everywhere. In human souls we find harmonious pre-dispositions of an
endlessly varied kind. The whole earth is ensouled, and thus the
great harmony is brought about, not only on earth but between the
earth and the constellations. This soul works throughout the body of
the earth, but it has its seat in a particular place, just as the
human soul has its seat in the heart; and from this place, as though
from a focus or source, its workings go out into the ocean and the
atmosphere. Hence the sympathy between the earth and the stars; hence
the regularity of nature's processes. The fact that the earth
truly has a, soul is shown most clearly by observing weather
conditions and the aspects under which they habitually occur. Under
certain aspects and constellations the air is always restless; if
such aspects are not present, or are few or transient, the air
remains quiet.
“These and countless other changes and phenomena
which take place on the earth are so exact and regular that they
cannot be ascribed to a blind cause, and since the planets themselves
know nothing of the angles which their rays make with the earth, the
earth must have a soul. The earth is an animal. One can observe in
the earth a complete analogy with the parts of an animal body. Plants
are its hair; metals are its veins; the waters of the sea are its
drink. The earth has a formative power, a kind of imagination; it has
movement, certain illnesses, and ebb and flow are its respirations.
The soul of the earth seems to be a kind of flame; hence the
subterranean warmth and the fact that without warmth there is no
propagation. A certain image of the Zodiac and of the whole firmament
is imprinted by God in the soul of the earth. “
We see today how this picture of the Zodiac has been
imprinted in the soul of the Earth, the aura of the Earth, and let us
work gradually towards the other part of Kepler's world-picture
— the part which had to remain in the subconscious depths of
the soul but shows clearly that what we can give today as a cosmology
is a fulfilment of it. Just as our Anthroposophy — or what
Anthroposophy should mean to us — must be deeply grounded in
the evolution of humanity, so is it inwardly connected with the
admonition which resounds to us from the Holy Grail. And if we look
at Europe, the Western land of ancient times, and see what memories
of the Atlantean epoch lived on into post-Atlantean times; if we see
how in the Greek world a last faint echo, sounded, showing how the
Nathan Jesus had once been permeated by the Christ in the higher
worlds, the Jesus who then descended and accomplished the Mystery of
Golgotha — then, if we follow that out, we may ask: Whence did
the Christ come? How did He come when He came from on high to be the
Lord of the Earth? He passed from the West to the East, and from the
East He returned to the West. His external physical covering came
down from the realm of the higher Hierarchies. The Beings of those
Hierarchies brought it down; it belonged to them. The Parsifal saga
reminds us of this in a beautiful way when it says: “A host of
Angels brought to Titurel the Holy Grail, the true Mystery of the
Christ Jesus, of the connection between the Lord of the Earth and the
Virgin Mother; and a host of Angels awaits it again in the realm of
the higher Hierarchies.” Let us seek it there; and then we
shall gradually come to understand what our anthroposophical
world-conception is seeking; we shall gradually press on further and
further towards a feeling, a perception, of the celestial aspect of
the Holy Grail and thence to its human aspect, to the Mother with the
Jesus, the Christ.
Thus we have tried to point the way a little into the
realm of human history, in so far as human history is sustained by
spiritual powers. And if you have perceived something of what I
wished to arouse through my words, not only in your thoughts but in
your feeling, the aim of this cycle of lectures will have been
achieved. I could quite as well have called it “Concerning the
Search for the Holy Grail”. It can be left to each individual
to judge whether the religious faiths scattered over the Earth will
one day find themselves in agreement with what is here meant by the
harmony of all religions. And he can decide also whether what should
be understood by the unity of religions is not more closely related
to the secret of the Holy Grail, as we have tried to describe it,
than is a great deal of talking about the unity of religions, which
may in fact be about something quite different
Anyone who wishes to hold fast to a narrow creed will
certainly not be immediately convinced by what has been said. This is
because he pays heed to the superficial course of events, and so to
the external aspect of the real deeds of Christ, which are themselves
of a spiritual nature. How a man was led by his karma to the
spiritual deeds of Christ; how Parsifal was driven along this path,
wherein is prefigured the unity of religions on Earth — that is
what we have wished to bring before our souls. And we should keep in
mind that continuation of the Parsifal saga which says that when the
Grail became invisible in Europe, it was carried to the realm of
Prester John, who had his kingdom on the far side of the lands
reached by the Crusaders. In the time of the Crusades the kingdom of
Prester John, the successor of Parsifal, was still honoured, and from
the way in which a search was made for it we must say: If all this
were expressed in terms of strict earthly geography, it would show
that the place of Prester John is not to be found on Earth.
[The editors
of the latest German edition (1960) call attention to the probability
of certain gaps in the existing shorthand report of this concluding
paragraph.]
Was that meant to be a hint, in the
European saga that continued the Parsifal saga, that since then,
without our being conscious of it, the Christ has been working in the
hidden depths of the East; that the religious controversies which
take their course on the conscious level in the East could be
assuaged by the out-flowings and revelations of the true Christ
Impulse, as was meant to happen, in accordance with the Parsifal
revelation, in the West? Was the sunlight of the Grail called upon to
shine above all other gods on Earth, as is symbolically indicated by
the fact that when the maiden carried in the gold-gleaming vessel,
with the secret of the Grail within it, the radiance of the Grail
outshone the other lights? Ought we to expect — quite contrary
to current beliefs — that the Christ power, still working
unconsciously, will appear in a changed form and as Ex oriente
lux, in the old phrase, will meet with that which has appeared as
light in the West? Should one light be able to unite with the other
light? But for that it will be necessary for us to be prepared —
we who are placed by karma in the geographical and cultural
environment over which passed the path of the Christ, when in higher
realms He had permeated Jesus of Nazareth in order to journey to the
East. Let us look up and feel that the Christ passed through our
heights before He was revealed on Earth! Let us make ourselves
capable of so understanding Him that we shall not misunderstand what
He will perhaps be able to say to us one day, when the time has come
for His impulses to flow through other earthly creeds!
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