LECTURE
IX.
Dornach,
December 9, 1923.
I
HAVE related to you different things concerning the nature of the
Hibernian Mysteries, and you saw in the last lecture that the
peculiar path of evolution which men pursued on the island of Ireland
led them to gain an insight, first of all, into what is possible to
the human mind, into what the human mind can experience through its
own inner activity. You must now consider how, through all the
preparatory exercises which those about to be initiated had to go
through, it was possible that as by magic, landscapes as they are
usually spread out before human senses were conjured up before these
senses. No religious or fanciful hallucinatory impressions were thus
given, for that which man was accustomed to look upon appeared before
the soul as from behind a veil, concerning which he knew very well
something was behind. And it was the same in regard to the gazing
into his own inner being in the case of the enchanted vision of the
dreamlike summer landscape. The pupil was prepared beforehand to have
Imaginations which were connected with that which he otherwise saw
with his outer senses. But he really knew when he had these
Imaginations that he was about to penetrate further by means of these
Imaginations to something quite different.
I have shown you how the pupil penetrated through to the
vision of the time before earthly existence, and to the time after
earthly existence; by vision forwards to the time after death as far
as the middle point between death and a new birth, and by vision
backward s into the time which immediately preceded the descent to
earth, — again to the middle point between death and a new
birth. But something still further happened. Because the pupil had
been led further to sink himself deeply into that which he had gone
through, and because his soul was strengthened through the vision of
the pre-earthly and of the post-earthly life, because he had gained
insight into Nature dying and continually being re-born, because of
all this he could with yet stronger inner power and energy sink
himself into what had happened through the numbness, through his
being taken up into world-spaces, through floating out into the blue
Ether-distances, and again through what had taken place when he felt
himself a personality only within his senses, when he so to speak
received nothing through the rest of his whole being as man, but only
received anything from existence through the eye, or in the auditory
tract, or in the sensation of feeling, etc., when he thus became
completely a sense-organ.
The pupil had learned to revive these conditions in
himself with strong inner energy, and out of these conditions to
allow that to come over him which worked a still further result. When
all this was indicated to him, after he had gone through all that
which I have described, quite voluntarily and inwardly to bring again
before himself the condition of inner numbness, so that he felt, as
it were, his own organism as a kind of mineral thing, that is to say,
as something quite foreign to him, when he felt his external being,
his bodily being, as a thing strange to him, and the soul, as it
were, only floating around, ensheathing this mineral thing, then in
the condition of consciousness which resulted he received a clear
vision of the Moon-existence, which preceded that of the Earth.
You remember how I have
described this Moon-existence in my
Occult Science,
and in many different lectures. That which has there been described arose in
the consciousness of the pupil. It was actually present before him.
This ancient Moon existence appeared to him as a planetary existence,
actually at first only in a watery, in a fluid condition, but not
like the water of today, rather I might say as if gelatinous, like
something coagulated. And the pupil felt himself within it; he felt
himself organized in this half-soft mass, and he felt the
organization of the whole planet streaming out from his own
organization.
But you must make clear to yourselves the difference
between experience at that time and experience today. Today we feel
ourselves to some extent bounded by our skin, and we say indeed that
as men we are that which is inside the skin. It is of course a mighty
mistake, for as soon as we consider that which is in the form of air
in the man the foolishness is evident of feeling ourselves limited by
the skin. I have often said: the volume of air which is within me was
a little while ago not within me, and the volume of air which will
soon be in me is outside. So that we only feel ourselves rightly
today as men when we do not think ourselves, as regards the air, cut
off from the outer world. We are everywhere where the outer air is;
in fact there is no difference whether you have now a piece of sugar
in your mouth and the next moment in your stomach, where it has gone
a certain way, or whether a volume of air is out there this moment
and next moment it is in your lungs. The piece of sugar goes its way
through the mouth, the air also goes its way through the organs of
air and breathing, and he who thinks this does not belong to him,
should also think his mouth does not belong to him, but that his body
begins with his stomach. So it is really nonsense for the present-day
man to think he is contained within the limits of his skin.
But in the Moon-existence there was no possibility of
thinking of oneself as enclosed within one's skin. Of such furniture
as is around us, towards which we go and of which we take hold, there
was none at that time. Everything that was there was a natural
product. And if you stretched out such an organ as you had at that
time, which may be compared with the finger of today, it was as if
one could draw this finger until it disappeared, or an arm till it
disappeared; one could make oneself quite thin and many other things.
Today when you take hold of a table you do not feel as if the table
belonged to you. If a man seized anything then, he simply felt it
belonged to him, as the air-volume now belongs to him. So actually
man's own organization was felt as only a piece of the whole
planet-Moon-existence
All this arose before the consciousness of the Hibernian
pupil. He received the impression that the gelatinous fluid was only
a condition of the Moon-organization at a particular time. There were
certain epochs in the Old Moon-organization when within the
gelatinous material something arose which was physically much harder
than our hard things today. It was not, however, mineral, as the
present day emerald or corundum or diamond is mineral, it was just
hard horny material. There was at that time nothing mineral in the
present sense of crystallization or the like. That which was hard as
a mineral was of a hard horny nature. It has such a structure that
one saw it had been formed organically. Today we should not speak of
the crystal formation of a cow's horn because we know that a cow's
horn is what it is through organic agency. Similarly with deer or the
like; all bone matter is the same. Mineral matter is different. But
at that time there was a mineral-like substance built up out of
organic life.
Those Beings who at that time partly went through their
human stage, who have only to accomplish part of their human
evolution during the earth-existence, are those individualities of
whom I have spoken as the great wise primeval Teachers of humanity on
earth, and who today find themselves in a colony on the moon.
All this appeared to the Hibernian pupil during the
state of numbness. And when he had experienced all in the suitable
manner, that is to say, in the way which seemed suitable to his
Initiators, then he was directed to advance again, repeatedly to
advance to causing the numbness to melt, to stream out into the
Ether-distances, to that point where he could feel: The paths of the
Heights bring me out into the distances of the blue Ether, even to
the boundaries of space-existence.
Then when he had repeatedly gone through this
experience, he felt all which was to be felt from the earth in his
movement out towards the Ether-distances. But while he was moving
towards the Ether-distances after the Heights had received him, and
had brought him near the Ether-distances, he felt that there outside,
as if at the boundary of the world of space, something pressed in to
him which again permeated him, which we today should call the astral
principle, something inwardly experienced, which united itself much
more significantly, much more energetically with the human being of
that time, though it could not be perceived as clearly as its
counterpart can be perceived today. This astral element united itself
with the human soul, only in a more energetic, more powerful, more
living way than today. It may be compared with the way that a feeling
would arise within the human inner being if a man were to expose
himself to the in-streaming, refreshingly in-streaming sunlight to
such an extent that the sunlight permeated his inner being with a
vivifying element, enabling him to feel his organization right into
each individual part. For if you only observe a little, you will
indeed be able to feel that if you freely expose yourself to the sun,
if you let the sun stream through you, but not in such a way that the
sun becomes uncomfortable to your inner feeling; but if you expose
yourself to the sun so that with a certain pleasure its light and
heat pour on to your body and into your organism, then you will feel
as if each individual organ felt slightly different from before. You
come in fact into a condition in which you could inwardly give a
description of yourself.
It is only through lack of power of observation in men
today that such things are so little known. If there were not this
lack of observation in man at the present day they would actually be
able to give at least dreamlike indications of what I have shown you
as to inner experience of the in-streaming sunlight. In earlier times
the pupil was instructed differently from today concerning the
interior of the human organism. Today corpses are dissected and from
this study one makes anatomical maps. That does not require much
attention, indeed it must be granted that many students do not bring
much attention, but it does not demand much. But formerly the pupil
was so instructed that he was placed in the sun, and was led to feel
his internal parts in reaction to the pleasant in-streaming sunlight.
Accordingly he could take note of his liver, stomach, etc. This inner
relationship of man with the macrocosm is there if only the
conditions are brought about. You may of course be blind, and yet
through touch feel the form of an object. And so if one organ in your
organism is made sensitive to another through attention to light, you
may describe the internal organs so that at least you can get
shadow-pictures of them in your consciousness. To a high degree it
was implanted in the pupil of the Hibernian Mysteries that by the
flowing out into the blue Ether-distance, by the flowing in of the
astral light, he would not now pre-eminently feel himself, but he
would feel in his consciousness a mighty world, a world of which he
now said as follows: I live wholly in an element with other beings.
This element is really nothing but Nature-goodness, for I feel
streaming into me from all around out of this element (forgive that I
use a mode of speech only possible in later times) out of this
element in which I swim as a fish in water, but myself also only
consisting in quite volatile imponderable elements, I feel how out of
this planetary element from all sides comes this pleasant
in-streaming. The pupil felt the astral light all around him
streaming into him, forming and fashioning him. This element is pure
Nature-goodness (thus he might have spoken) for from all around
something is being given to me. I am really surrounded by pure
goodness. It is goodness, but a Nature-goodness which is all around
me. But this Nature-goodness is not only goodness, it is creative
goodness. For it is that which at the same time with its powers
causes me to exist, gives me form, and sustains me in so far as I
swim, hover, move in this element. Thus the impressions which were
produced were of a natural-moral character.
To compare with something of the present day we might
say: If a man had a rose before him and could smell it and out of
inner truthfulness and honesty said: “Divine goodness which is
spread out in the whole earth-planet flows also into this rose, and
because this rose communicated its essence to my organ of smell I
smell the living divine goodness in the planet.” If a man today
with inner honesty could say such a thing when inhaling the scent of
the rose then he would experience something like a weak shadow of
that which formerly, as complete life-element, was experienced by the
individual man. And that was the experience of the sun-existence
which preceded the Moon-existence. Thus the pupil could experience
the Sun-existence and the Moon-existence, which preceded the
existence of our earth.
And further, when the
pupil had been led to it, to feel himself only in his senses, when he
had experienced something like the stripping off of his whole
organism, and lived only in the experience in the senses, so that he
actually lived in his eye, in his auditory tract, in his whole sense
of touch, then he perceived that which I have described in my
Occult Science
as the Saturn-existence, as the existence where man lived
and moved in the heat-element, in the differentiated heat-element. It
was as if he did not feel himself as flesh and blood, as bones and
nerves, but merely as an organism of heat, of heat amidst other heat,
as planetary Saturn-heat; he perceived heat when the outer heat was
of a different degree from the inner heat. Moving in heat, living in
heat, sensing heat against heat, this was the Saturn-existence.
And this experience was gone through by the pupil when
he was drawn into his senses. These senses themselves were not so
much differentiated as today. The perception of heat against heat, of
life through heat, of life in heat was the most important thing. But
there were moments when man, himself a heat-organism, approached
another heat-organism or heat-mass, when, through the contact, he
felt in himself something like a springing-up of flames; he was now
in an element not merely of heat which streams and moves and surges —
he was suddenly something like a flaming thing, also something like a
moving sensation of taste, taste not only as on the tongue —
that organ of course did not exist at that time — but taste
which a man feels in himself, but which is kindled by contact with
another body which also imparts something of itself. The
Saturn-existence had become active in the pupil.
You see, therefore, that in the Hibernian Mysteries the
pupil was led into the past existence of our own earth-planet. He
learned to know Saturn, Sun, and Moon-existence as the successive
metamorphoses of the earth-existence.
And then he was repeatedly stimulated to live through
the experience which now led him into his own inner being, first, to
experience again what I have described as the sensation of inner
pressure, as if he were pressed together by the feeling of his own
centre, as if the air in him became condensed, so that, if we would
compare the condition with something corresponding to the experience
of a man today, we could compare it with the feeling that he could
not get his breath out, it pushed and pressed in on him on every
side.
That was the first condition, and the pupil again, by
external voluntary effort had to re-awaken it in his soul. And if he
did this, if he actually came into the dream-condition of which he
had earlier been capable, of dreaming in the waking-state of
nature-existence as Summer landscape, if he came into this condition,
then at a particular moment he had suddenly a quite peculiar
experience. If I am to characterize this experience for you I must d
o it in a somewhat roundabout way. Think then, as man of the present
day, you come into a warm room; you feel the heat; you come out, and
if it is 5 or 10 degrees below zero you feel the cold. You feel the
difference between heat and cold, but you feel it bodily. You do not
unite it with your soul. And as earth-man, when you come into a warm
room, you do not always have the feeling: here in this room something
has spread itself abroad like a great spirit which encircles me with
love. You experience this heat as something bodily pleasant. You do
not experience it as something for the soul. It is the same with the
cold; you freeze, your body freezes; but you have not the feeling:
out there, through particular climatic conditions, demons come in all
directions towards you which whisper to you something so frosty that
you are also cold in the soul. Physical heat is not at the same time
something belonging to the soul, because you do not feel intensely
the nature-soul experiences as earth-man with ordinary consciousness.
As earth-man you can warm yourself in the friendship, in the love of
another human being. You may feel chilled by his frostiness, or
perhaps by his commonplace nature, but by such experiences we mean
something belonging to the soul. Only think how little the physical
earth-man of today is inclined to say when in summer he steps out
into the hot sultry air: now the gods love me. Nor how little the man
of today is inclined to say when he steps out into the wintry cold:
now only those sylphs fly through the air who are frosty and
commonplace in the sylph-world. Those are expressions which we do not
hear at all today. Now you see, this sensation which I wish to
indicate (this is why I said that I had to explain the thing, in a
roundabout way), this sensation when the pupil experienced that inner
feeling of pressure, resulted as a matter of course. All that he felt
as heat he felt at the same time as soul-heat as well as physical
heat. This was because with his consciousness he was transported into
the Jupiter-existence, which will arise out of the earth-existence.
For we shall only become Jupiter-men if we unite physical heat with
soul-heat. As Jupiter-men we shall come to this, if we caress in love
a human being, or it may be a child, we shall be to that child at the
same time an actual pourer-forth of heat.
To pour forth love and heat will not be separated as
now, we shall actually come to this that we shall pour forth from our
souls into our surroundings the heat we experience.
Not indeed in this earth-world but transported into
another world, was the pupil of the Hibernian Mysteries brought to
this experience. Hence the Jupiter-existence was present to him, not
of course, in physical earth-reality, but in a picture.
And the next advance was that the pupil felt so truly
that inner distress of which I spoke yesterday, that he actually
experienced the necessity of overcoming his own Ego, because
otherwise it may be the source of evil.
If the pupil rightly caused this soul-conception to be
present in himself, then something else arose in him. He did not only
feel soul-heat and physical heat as one, but that which he felt as
one, this soul-physical heat, began to shine. The mystery of the
shining of light, of the shining of soul-light, arose for the pupil.
Thus he was transported into that future when the earth will be
changed into the Venus-planet, into the future Venus-planet.
And now when the pupil felt everything flowing together
into his heart which he had experienced earlier, just as I described
it to you yesterday, all that he had experienced in his soul,
manifested itself at the same time as the experience of the planet.
Man has a thought. The thought does not remain within the skin of the
man. The thought begins to resound. The thought becomes Word. That
which the man lives forms itself into Word. In the Vulcan-planet the
Word spreads itself out. Everything in the Vulcan-planet is speaking
living Being. Word sounds to Word. Word explains itself by Word. Word
speaks to Word. Word learns to understand Word. Man feels himself as
the World-understanding Word, as the Word-world understanding Word.
While this was present before the candidate for
Initiation in Hibernia, he knew himself to be in the Vulcan
existence, in the last metamorphosed condition of the earth-planet.
So you see that the Hibernian Mysteries really belong to
those which we are entitled to call in Spiritual Science the Great
Mysteries. For that into which the pupils were initiated gave them a
survey, an outlook over human pre-earthly and post-earthly life. It
gave them at the same time a survey over Cosmic life, into which man
is woven, out of which in the course of time he is born. The human
being learned thus to know the Microcosm, that is, to know himself,
as spirit-soul-bodily Being in connection with the Macrocosm. He
learned also to know the coming into being, the weaving, the arising
and passing away, and the changing, metamorphosing itself of the
Macrocosm. These Hibernian Mysteries were great Mysteries.
And they reached their full flower in the period which
preceded the Mystery of Golgotha. But there was this peculiarity in
the great Mysteries, that in these great Mysteries the Christ was
spoken of as the One who was to come, just as later men spoke of the
Christ as of Him who had gone through events in the past. And
actually when after the first Initiation, when the pupil leaving the
Temple was led before the image of the Christ, they wished to show
him: The whole trend of earth-evolution leads towards the Event of
Golgotha. At that time it was presented as an Event which was to
come.
There was in fact upon this island which was later to go
through so many trials, a Centre of the Great Mysteries, a Centre of
Christian Mysteries before the Mystery of Golgotha, in which in the
right way, the spiritual gaze of a man living before the Mystery of
Golgotha was directed towards the Mystery of Golgotha.
And then, when the Mystery of Golgotha took place, when
over in Palestine, the wonderful events came to pass which we
describe as the experience of Christ Jesus on Golgotha and its
surroundings, while these wonderful events came to pass in Palestine,
great festivals were held within the Hibernian Mysteries, and within
their community, i.e. by the people who belonged to the Hibernian
Mysteries. And that which came to pass in actual fact in Palestine,
was portrayed in pictures on the island of Hibernia in ways a
hundred-fold, though the picture was as a memory of the past. They
experienced in pictures the Mystery of Golgotha contemporaneously on
the island of Hibernia, while the Mystery of Golgotha came to pass
historically, in Palestine. When later, in temples and churches, the
Mystery of Golgotha was experienced pictorially, was shown in
pictures to the people, then these were pictures which recalled
something which had taken place on the earth, which were drawn out of
the ordinary consciousness as a kind of historic memory. These
pictures existed on the island of Hibernia before they could be
produced from historic memory of the past, but as they only could be
produced out of the Spirit itself. On the island of Hibernia that was
spiritually seen which took place before the bodily eye in Palestine,
at the beginning of our era. And so, on the island of Hibernia,
humanity actually experienced the Mystery of Golgotha spiritually.
And this indicates the greatness of all that went forth later from
the island of Hibernia, for the rest of the civilized world, but
which vanished in later time.
I beg you now to notice the following. He who studies
only external history will find much that is splendid, beautiful,
that lifts up the heart, that illumines the mind, when he looks back
historically into the ancient world of the East, when he looks back
historically into ancient Greece, into ancient Rome. He may
experience many things of this kind if he goes on, let us say, to the
time of Charles the Great, and through the Middle Ages. But just
notice how meager historical records were in that age, a couple of
centuries after the rise of Christianity and approximately to the
ninth or tenth post-Christian centuries. Examine historical works
yourselves. In all the older genuine historical works you will find
everywhere only short accounts, very little material for these
centuries. — Then the material begins to be set out more fully.
Certainly later historians who are, as it were, ashamed for the sake
of their profession to disperse their material so badly, because they
cannot relate what they do not know, invent all sorts of fancy
constructions which are now placed in these centuries. But that is
all nonsense. If you honestly represent external history it is
somewhat thin as regards historical records during that period when
ancient Rome fell, and when devastating swarms of migratory peoples
took place, which were really not so fearfully striking outwardly as
men of today represent them, which were indeed only striking compared
with the quiet of earlier and later times. For if you only consider
today, or perhaps in the time before the War had counted how many
people journeyed from Russia, let us say, to Switzerland each year,
you would find they were more in number than during the times of the
migrations of peoples through these same regions of Europe. All these
things are relative. So that if we would speak in the style which the
historians lavish upon the migrations of the peoples, we should have
to say: up to the time of the late War the whole of Europe was in
continual migration. The emigration to America was infinitely greater
than the streams of the peoples' migrations. We do not make this
clear to ourselves. Historic records are meager during the time that
is called the period of migration of peoples, and in the period which
followed that migration. Very little is known about this period. Very
little can be described of what took place in this neighbourhood, for
example, or in France, or in Germany. But this was the very time when
the echoes of that which was seen in the Hibernian Mysteries spread
over Europe, even though only in a weak echo, the very time when the
effects, the impulses of the great Hibernian Mysteries streamed into
civilization.
And now two great streams met, one stream of which we
may say — for all that I am saying now is simply a relation of
facts, not in any way letting fall a shadow of sympathy or antipathy
but simply describing actual history — two streams met, one
which in a roundabout way came from the East through Greece and Rome.
This movement which took into account the endowment or talents more
and more breaking in upon humanity, depending merely on the power of
reason and the senses, occupied itself with that which existed as
historic memory of externally visible, externally experienced events.
From Palestine the news spread through Greece and Rome, which was
taken up by men into their religious life, the news of what had taken
place in the physical-sense World through the God Christ.
This reckoned upon the human understanding, which by
this time was dependent upon what today we call the ordinary
consciousness bound up with the reason and the senses. This stream
spread in the most magnificent way. But it finally overwhelmed that
stream which came over from the West, from Hibernia, which as a last
echo of the ancient instinctive earth-wisdom relied on the ancient
treasures of wisdom of humanity, which were now to be illuminated by
the new consciousness. Something spread over Europe from Hibernia
which did not take into account illumination with the wisdom founded
on sense perception, or proofs which could demonstrate that which had
taken place historically. But cults, wisdom teachings as Hibernian
cults, Hibernian wisdom teachings spread abroad which were based on
illumination from the Spiritual world, from the Spiritual world even
at the identical time when as in the case of the Mystery of Golgotha,
the event was taking place in physical reality on another spot of
earth. The physical reality of Palestine was seen spiritually in
Hibernia.
But that which was based only on physical reality
over-shadowed that which came from the spiritual exaltation of men,
from the spiritual deepening of the inner nature of man, from the
spiritual permeation of the soul of man. And gradually out of a
necessity, of which I have often spoken from other points of view,
gradually that which appealed to the sense-physical existence gained
the upper hand over that which derived from spiritual insight. The
news of the Redeemer living on earth in a physical body, gained the
upper hand over the wonderful imaginative pictures which came over
from Hibernia and which could be presented in cults, over the
magnificent imaginative pictures which announced the Redeemer as a
spiritual Being, and which paid no attention in the presentation of
their cult, in their descriptions, to the fact that it was also a
historic event. For least of all were they able to take this fact
into consideration in the period when it was not yet a historic
event, for the rites were already instituted before the Mystery of
Golgotha.
And the time dawned when men more and more were only to
be reached through that which was to be seen physically, when men,
one might say, naturally came to this, that things were no longer
accepted as true which were not founded on physical sight. Thus
wisdom which came over from Hibernia was no longer grasped in its
reality. And the art which came from Hibernia could no longer be felt
in its Cosmic truth. Thus there arose more and more not a Hibernian
knowledge, but a knowledge which only had to do with the external
sense world, not a Hibernian art, but an art — and even
Rafael's art is no other — an art which needed the
physical-sense world as model, whereas the Hibernian art was founded
on the direct representation of the spiritual, and all that belongs
to the spirit.
Thus a time came when in a certain sense, a veil of
darkness was drawn over the spiritual life, in which men boasted
about reason and the senses only, and founded philosophies which
showed in some way how reason and the senses could approach
existence, or truth, or attain to truth.
Then there came about
that amazing fact that men were no longer accessible to spiritual
influences. And where could it be seen more clearly, I would say, how
the consciousness of men was no longer accessible to spiritual
influences, than in that which was given to men — the way in
which the
Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz
was given to mankind. I explained this some time ago in the periodical
Die Drei, Vols. 3, 4, 5, 1927.
There I called attention to the
remarkable thing which happened regarding the
Chemical Wedding.
Valentine Andreae is the physical writer of this
Chemical Wedding.
This
Chemical Wedding
was written down in the
year just before the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War. But no one
who knows the biography of Valentine Andreae would not doubt that
Valentine Andreae, who became later an orthodox pastor, and wrote
other books full of unction, wrote the
Chemical Wedding.
It is pure nonsense to believe that Valentine Andreae wrote the
Chemical Wedding.
Just compare the
Chemical Wedding, or
The Organisation of the World,
or the other writings of
Valentine Andreae — physically it was the same personality —
with the greasy unctuousness, fat oiliness of that which Pastor
Valentine Andreae, who only bears the same name, wrote in his later
life. It is a most noteworthy phenomenon. Here is a young man who has
scarcely completed his school education, who writes down such things
as the
Organisation of the World,
as the
Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz,
and we have to exert ourselves to fathom
the inner meaning of these writings. He himself understands nothing
of it, for he shows us that later. He becomes an unctuous pastor. It
is the same man! And we only need to examine this phenomenon to find
it a reasonable explanation which I have given, that the
Chemical Wedding
was not written by a human being, or only in so far
written by a human being as Napoleon's secretary, constantly full of
anxiety, wrote his letters. But Napoleon was always a man who stood
on his feet, with his legs firmly on the ground, was in fact a
physical personality. He who wrote the
Chemical Wedding
was not a physical personality. He made use of this secretary, who later
became the oily pastor, Valentine Andreae.
Think of this wonderful
event, just preceding the Thirty Years' War — a young man,
quite a young man, lends his hand to a spiritual Being, who writes
down such a thing as the
Chemical Wedding.
And that which
comes to light in this case only, in a particular example often
happened at that time. Only things are not so well known or
preserved. That which above all was important for mankind at that
time was given to men in such a way that they were unable to grasp it
with their reason. This was the spirituality flowing forth, which
still revealed itself to men, which men themselves could set down,
but could no longer experience.
Thus in those days when
mere empty pages filled the history books, in that time humanity
lived, I would say, in two streams, in one stream which proceeds from
the physical world below, when men more and more only believe in that
which reason and the senses say to them, but above, continually,
there is to be found a spiritual revelation made manifest through
men, but not understood by men. And to the most characteristic
examples of this spiritual revelation belonged such things as the
Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz.
But all this revelation
went in spite of everything through human heads, even though these
human heads did not understand it. It went through human heads,
became feebler and distorted. Fine poetry, grand poetry became such
murmuring and babbling as the verses in the
Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz
often are. Nevertheless, they are
revelations of something magnificent, mighty macrocosmic images,
mighty experiences majestically arising, between man and the
macrocosm. If one reads the
Chemical Wedding
with the insight
of today, one learns to understand these images of the
Chemical Wedding;
they explain themselves, for they are coloured by the
brain through which they have passed, and behind them the grandiose
element appears.
Such things are a proof that that which men once
experienced has continued to live on in the sub-conscious. It was so
undoubtedly in the first period of the devastating Thirty Years' War.
In the first half of the 17th century there flowed in that which was
great, majestic spiritual truth. Only the Mystics preserve the
impress made by it on the mind. But the real substance, the spiritual
substance is quite lost. Reason above all conquers, reason prepares
the age of freedom. Today we look back over these things, we gaze
back on the Hibernian Mysteries I would say, with a truly deepened
inner soul-life, for they are in very truth the last great Mysteries,
those last great Mysteries through which human and cosmic secrets
could express themselves. And when today we search into these secrets
again, then do these Hibernian Mysteries appear to us truly great.
But we cannot really fathom them if we have not first
searched into these matters in an independent way. And even when we
have investigated them in an independent way, something peculiar
arises. If in the Akashic Record one approaches the images of these
Hibernian Mysteries, then one experiences something which works in a
repelling way. It is as if one were held back by some force, as if
one could not approach with the soul. And the nearer one approaches,
the more does that obscure itself towards which one would hasten in
soul, and one passes into a state of soul-bewilderment. One has to
work through this soul-bewilderment. One can do nothing else than
vivify in oneself that which one already knows of as resembling it,
that which has been achieved and discovered by oneself. And one
realizes why that is so. We see that indeed these Hibernian Mysteries
were indeed the last echo of an old wisdom given to mankind by the
Divine Spiritual Powers, which, however, in the age when the
Hibernian Mysteries sank down into the shadow-life were at the same
time spiritually surrounded with a thick rampart, so that the human
being cannot passively penetrate them, cannot passively gaze into
them, so that he cannot approach them unless he has awakened in
himself spiritual activity, and has thus become in the right way a
man of modern times. I would say, the approach to the Hibernian
Mysteries was closed at that time so that men are not able to
approach the Mysteries in the old way, so that they are compelled to
experience in the activity of their own consciousness that which in
the epoch of freedom must be found inwardly by man. No longer through
a historical nor even through a clairvoyant historical vision of
ancient, marvelously great secrets, may he reach these secrets, but
he may enter this path only through his own inner activity.
Herewith it is most markedly indicated in regard to the
Mysteries of Hibernia, that a new age begins in the epoch in which
these Mysteries sink into the shadow-land; but they may be seen even
today in their whole glory and majesty by the soul-being who is
sustained by inner freedom. For through real inner activity we can
approach them, we can conquer that which beats us back, a desire to
bewilder us, which for the soul obstructs that which down to these
latest times revealed itself to the candidates of the great ancient
Mysteries of the former wisdom, instinctive indeed, but none the less
a high spiritual wisdom, which once poured itself over humanity on
the earth as a primal force of the soul. The most beautiful, the most
significant memorials in later times to the primal wisdom of men, to
the primal grace of the Divine Spiritual Beings, which reveals itself
in the primal conditions of humanity, the most beautiful
soul-spiritual memorials of this time are those images which can
unveil themselves to us when we direct our gaze to the Mysteries of
Hibernia.
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