LECTURE EIGHT:
The five
Post-Atlantean Civilizations.
Greek and Teutonic Mythology.
[ Study Guide: Souls of the Nations — Eighth Lecture ]
If we wish to study the
development of Germanic-Nordic history and the spiritual impulses
embodied therein, we must first of all bear in mind the fundamental
character of Teutonic mythology. In the last lecture I pointed out
that this Teutonic mythology, despite its many points of similarity
with other mythologies, is nevertheless something quite unique. It is
true, however, that among the Germanic peoples and tribes of Europe
there was a large measure of agreement on fundamental conceptions of
mythology so that in the regions far to the South it was possible for
a uniform view of mythology to exist and, on the whole, a similar
understanding of the kindred relationships between those mythologies.
At one time there must have been identical understanding of the
unique character of the Teutonic mythology throughout all the
countries where this mythology, in one form or another, existed. The
common features of Teutonic mythology are very different from the
essential characteristic of Greek mythology, to say nothing of the
Egyptian. Everything in Teutonic mythology is interrelated and
differs widely from the substance of Graeco-Roman mythology. At the
present time it is not easy to understand this essential element
because — on account of certain intellectual assumptions which
are outside the scope of the present lecture — there is a
general tendency today to embark on the study of comparative
religion. But this is a field in which it is possible to perpetuate
the greatest nonsense. What happens as a rule when a person compares
the mythologies and religions of various peoples with one another? He
compares the superficial aspects of the stories of the gods and
attempts to demonstrate that the figure of a particular god which
appears in one mythology is also found in a like manner in another
mythology, and so on. To anyone who knows the real facts this
comparative study of religions shows a most disquieting trend in the
anthropological studies of the present day, because it is everywhere
the practice to compare externals. The impression created by the
comparative studies of religions upon one who knows the facts is
comparable to the impression made by someone who declares: “Thirty
years ago I made the acquaintance of a man; he wore a uniform
consisting of blue trousers, red coat, and some kind of head-gear,
and so on.” Then he rapidly adds: “Twenty years ago I
became acquainted with a man who wore the same uniform and ten years
ago I met another who also wore the same uniform.” Now if the
person in question were to believe that, because the men with whom he
became acquainted thirty, twenty and ten years ago wore the same
uniform, they could therefore be compared with one another in respect
of their essential being, he could be greatly mistaken, for a totally
different person might be wearing that uniform at those different
times. The essential thing is to know what sort of man is concealed
behind the uniform. This parallel may seem farfetched, yet in
comparative religion it is tantamount to comparing Adonis to Christ.
One is merely comparing externals. The apparel and the
characteristics of the Beings in the various legends may be very
similar or even alike, but the point is to know what is the nature of
the divine-spiritual Beings concealed behind them. If completely
different Beings are present in Adonis and in Christ, then we are
merely comparing externals and the parallel has only superficial
value. Nevertheless this comparative method is extremely popular at
the present day. Therefore the results of the extensive research in
the comparative study of religion with its purely external approach
are not of the least consequence. The point is, rather, that one
should learn to know to some extent from an understanding of the
specific differences of the Folk Spirits the manner in which a
particular people arrived at its mythology or other teachings about
the gods, or even at its philosophy.
We
can scarcely understand the fundamental character of Teutonic
mythology unless we review once more the five successive ages of
civilization in the post-Atlantean epoch. These five ages of
civilization were brought about by migrations from West to East, so
that at the end of these migrations the most mature, the most
advanced human beings pushed forward into Indian territory and
founded there the sacred primeval Indian civilization. The next
civilization, and nearer to our own age, was the Persian which was
followed by the Egypto-Chaldean-Babylonian, then the Graeco-Latin
civilization and finally by our own.
The
essential nature of these five civilizations can only be understood
if one realizes that in past ages those who participated in them,
including also the Angels, the Folk Spirits or Archangels and Time
Spirits, were all quite different from one another. Today we propose
to devote more attention to the way in which the human beings who
participated in these civilizations differed from one another.
The
men who, in ancient India for example, founded the ancient Indian
civilization — which then found its literary expression in the
Vedas and later Indian literature — were totally different from
the Graeco-Latin peoples. They were different from the Persian, from
the Egypto-Chaldean peoples and most of all from those peoples who
were being prepared in Europe for the fifth post-Atlantean
civilization. In what respect did they differ? The entire make-up of
the members of the ancient Indian peoples was completely different
from that of the inhabitants of all the countries lying further West.
The peoples of ancient India had reached a high stage of evolution
before they developed the ‘I’. In all other aspects of
evolution they had made great strides. Behind them lay a very long
period of development, but they had lived through it in a kind of dim
consciousness. Then the ‘I’ entered in — they awoke
to consciousness of the ‘I’. Amongst the Indians this
came comparatively late, at a time when the people was already to a
certain extent very mature, when the had already undergone what the
Teutonic peoples still had to undergo when they had developed their
ego. Bear this carefully in mind. The Teutonic peoples had to
experience with their fully developed ‘I’ what the
inhabitants of ancient India had passed through in a dim state of
consciousness, without a developed ego-consciousness.
Now
what was the nature of the development which humanity could undergo
in the post-Atlantean epoch? In the old Atlantean times human beings
were still endowed with a high degree of the old dim clairvoyance
with which they saw into the divine spiritual world. They had an
insight into the hidden workings of that world. Now imagine
yourselves for a moment in old Atlantis before the migrations towards
the East had begun. The air was still permeated with water vapour and
misty exhalations. The soul of man was different too. He could not
yet differentiate between the various external sense perceptions; at
that time he found the spiritual content of the world seemingly
diffused around him like a spiritual aura. Thus he possessed a
certain natural clairvoyance which he had to overcome. This was
achieved by the operation of the forces to whose influence human
beings were subject when migrating from West to East. In the course
of these migrations man underwent many different stages of spiritual
development. There were peoples who, during their migration eastward,
at first slept through, as it were, the period of emergence from the
old clairvoyance and had already reached a higher stage of
development when their ego was still in a dim state of consciousness.
They went through various stages of development, but their ‘I’
was still in a dull, dreamlike condition. The Indians were the
furthest evolved when their ego awoke to full self-consciousness.
They were so far advanced that they possessed a rich inner soul-life
which no longer showed any traces of that elementary stage in soul
development which still persisted for a long period of time in the
peoples of Europe. The Indians had already undergone that elementary
stage a long time before. They awoke to self-consciousness when they
were already endowed with spiritual powers and spiritual capacities
which enabled them to penetrate deeply into the spiritual worlds.
Whence all the activity and positive influence of the various Angels
and Archangels on the human souls had become a matter of complete
indifference to the more advanced members of the Indian people in
their efforts to emerge from their old twilight conditions of
clairvoyance. They had no direct consciousness of the work of the
Archangels and Angels and all those spiritual Beings who were active,
particularly in the folk spirit. All the work of these higher Beings
upon their souls, upon their astral and etheric bodies, was
accomplished at a time when they were not yet ego-conscious. They
awoke to ego-consciousness when their souls had already reached a
very high stage of development. The most advanced among them were
able, after a brief development, to read again in the Akashic Record
all that had formerly taken place in the evolution of humanity, so
that they gazed out into their spiritual environment, into the
Cosmos, and could read in the Akashic Record what was taking place in
the spiritual world and what they had undergone in a dim twilight
state of consciousness. They were unconsciously guided into higher
spheres. Before their ego-consciousness had awakened they had
acquired spiritual capacities that were much richer than those of the
Western peoples. Thus the spiritual world could be directly observed
by these men. The most advanced among those who guided the Indian
people had risen to such high spiritual levels that, at the time when
their ego awoke, they were no longer dependent upon the ego in order
to observe how human development sprang forth, so to speak, from the
Spirits of Form or Powers, but were more intimately associated with
the Beings we call Spirits of Movement or Mights and those above them
in the second Hierarchy, the Spirits of Wisdom or Dominions. These
Beings were of special interest to them. The spiritual Beings of
lower rank were, on the other hand, Beings whose domain they had
already shared in former times and who therefore were no longer of
particular importance to them. Thus they looked up to what later on
they called the sum-total of the Spirits of Movement and of the
Spirits of Wisdom, to that which was later characterized by the Greek
expressions Dynamis and Kyriotetes. They beheld again these Beings
and called them “Mula-prakriti”, the sum-total of the
Spirits of Movement, and “Maha-purusha”, the sum-total of
the Spirits of Wisdom, that which lives as if in a spiritual unity.
They could attain to this vision because those who belonged to this
people became ego conscious at such a late stage of development. They
had already undergone what the later peoples still had to experience
through their ‘I’.
The
peoples belonging to the ancient Persian civilization were less
highly developed. Their development was such that through their
peculiar cognitive capacity, and through the awakening of their ‘I’
at a lower stage of evolution, they looked to the Powers or Spirits
of Form. With these they were especially familiar; they could
understand them to some extent and they were particularly interested
in them. The peoples belonging to the Persian communities awakened to
ego-consciousness one stage lower than the Indians, but it was a
stage which the peoples of the West still had to reach. Hence the
Persians were conversant with the Powers or Spirits of Form, known
collectively as the ‘Amshaspands”. They were the
radiations which we know as Spirits of Form or Powers and which, from
their point of view, the peoples of the Persian civilization were
specially fitted to perceive clairvoyantly.
We
then come to the Chaldean peoples. They were already aware of the
Primal Forces, the directing Time Spirits, the Spirits of
Personality. Now the peoples of the Graeco-Latin age also had a
certain consciousness of these Primal Forces or Spirits of
Personality, but in a different form. In their case there was an
additional factor which may help to clarify our understanding. The
Greeks were nearer to the Germanic peoples. They became ego-conscious
at a higher stage than the Germanic-Nordic peoples. The working of
the Angels and the Archangels in the human soul which the Northern
peoples still experienced was no longer directly experienced by the
Graeco-Latin peoples, though they still had a distinct recollection
of it. The difference between the Germanic and Graeco-Latin peoples
is that the latter still preserved a memory of the participation of
Angels and Archangels in the development of their soul-life. On the
whole they had no clear recollection of this stage for they were
still in a state of diminished consciousness. But now in clairvoyant
memory they recalled this experience quite distinctly. The creation
of this whole world, the working of the Angels and Archangels, both
normal and abnormal, in the human soul was known to the Greeks. They
preserved in their souls vivid memory pictures of what they had
experienced. Now memory is much clearer, takes on sharper outlines
than the immediate experiences of the present moment. It is no longer
so fresh, no longer so youthful; memory or recollection has sharper
contours, sharper outlines. Greek mythology is a memory-picture in
bold, clear outlines of the influence or positive activity of the
Angels and Archangels upon the human soul. If we do not approach
Greek mythology in this way, if we simply compare Greek names with
other names in the various mythologies, if we do not take into
account the influence of special forces, nor understand the
Significance of the figures that appear as Apollo and Minerva and so
on, then we are making a superficial study of comparative religion;
we are only comparing externals. The manner or mode of perception in
those days is the important point.
When
we have grasped this, we realize that Greek mythology was built up
from conscious memories. The Egyptians and Chaldeans had only a dim
recollection of the activity of the Angels and Archangels, but they
were able to perceive the world of Primal Forces. It seemed as if
they were beginning to lose the memory of Angelic beings. Persian
mythology, on the other hand, had completely forgotten the world of
the Angels or Archangels, but at the same time men were able to look
into the world of the Powers or Spirits of Form. That which is to be
found in Greek mythology had been forgotten by the Persians and
totally forgotten by the Indians. When they looked into the Akashic
Record they perceived again the entire sequence of events of the
earlier epochs and created pictures of the earlier events out of
their knowledge which however was divine knowledge which they owed to
more highly developed spiritual powers. This also helps to explain
the great difficulty which the peoples of the East experienced in
understanding the spiritual life of the West and that superior
attitude which they adopted towards the spiritual life of the West.
They arc prepared to accept the materialistic civilization of the
West, but the spiritual culture of the West — unless they come
to it indirectly through Spiritual Science — remains more or
less closed to them. They had already reached a high stage of
evolution at a time when Christ Jesus had not yet descended upon
Earth. He only incarnated in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. That is
an event which could no longer be grasped with the forces which the
Indian people had developed. In order to apprehend the coming of
Christ one needed faculties belonging to a less lofty station of the
‘I’ — a dwelling of the ‘I’ in more
humble forces of the human soul.
The
Teutonic peoples not only preserved a memory of the working of the
Angels and Archangels into the soul of man, but even at the time when
Christ Jesus walked upon Earth were aware that they were still
subject to these influences and that they participated in the
activity of the Angels and Archangels who were still active in their
souls. When they underwent these inner experiences of the soul the
Graeco-Latin peoples recalled something which they had gone through
in former times. The Germanic peoples responded to these experiences
more personally. Their ego had awakened at the stage of existence
when the Folk Spirits and those spiritual Beings who were still
subject to the Folk Spirits were still active in their souls; hence
these peoples were nearest to the events that took place in old
Atlantis.
In
old Atlantis man beheld the spiritual Powers and spoke of a kind of
unity of the Godhead, because he enjoyed direct perception into the
old primeval states of human evolution. At that time one could still
perceive the dominion of the Spirits of Wisdom and of the Spirits of
Movement, a dominion which the Indians of a later epoch perceived
again in the Akashic Records. These Germanic peoples of the West had
raised themselves one stage above this level of perception, so that
they experienced directly the transition from the old perception to
the new. They perceived an active weaving of real spiritual powers at
a time when the ego was not yet awake. But at the same time they saw
the gradual awakening of the ‘I’ and the penetration of
man's soul by the Angels and Archangels. They were aware of
this direct transition. They preserved a clairvoyant memory of an
earlier weaving life, when everything was seen through the dim mists
of Atlantis and when, from out of this sea of mist, there emerged
what we have come to know as the divine-spiritual Beings immediately
above man. The old Gods, however, who were active before the Gods
intervened in the life of the human soul, and who could now be seen
and with whom men felt themselves to be united, those divine Beings
who were active in the very far distant past at the time of old
Atlantis, were called the Vanir. After Atlantis men saw the weaving
of the Angels and Archangels whom they called the Aesir. They were
the Beings who as Angels and Archangels were concerned with the ‘I’
of man which then awoke at an elementary level. These Beings took
over the leadership of the Germanic peoples. What the other peoples
of the East had “slept through”, namely, the perception
of how the soul, the inner life, was gradually developed by means of
the various forces which were bestowed upon it by the normal and
abnormal Angels and Archangels, this had to be experienced by the
peoples of Europe beginning from the lowest stage. They had to be
fully conscious in order that these soul-forces might gradually
develop.
Thus
Nordic man perceived the figures of the Gods, the divine Beings
working directly upon his soul; he saw the human soul wresting its
way out of the Cosmos. This was direct experience to him. He did not
recall in retrospect how the souls of men had been ‘in-formed’
into their bodies; rather did he see all this as an immediate and
present happening. He was there with his own ego; he was a conscious
witness of it. Even until the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries AD he
retained this feeling, this understanding of how the forces of the
soul are gradually formed and crystallized into the body. In the
first place he beheld the Archangelic Beings who worked in his soul
and endowed him with his psychic potentialities, and the greatest of
these Archangels was Wotan or Odin.
[See
Appendix.]
He saw him at work upon his soul and
he saw how he worked into his soul. How did he perceive Wotan or
Odin? Who or what was he? In what form did Nordic man learn to love
Odin and above all to understand him? He learned to recognize him as
one of those Archangels who in the past had decided to renounce their
development to higher stages. He came to know Odin as one of the
abnormal Archangels, as one of the great figures of renunciation in
ancient times, who had assumed the office of Archangel when they took
upon themselves the important task of working into the souls of men.
Nordic ma experienced the activity of Odin at a time when he was
still in the process of giving the gift of language to the
incarnating soul of man. The manner in which Odin himself worked upon
his peoples in order to endow them with language has survived in a
remarkable way. It was described as a Divine Initiation. The means by
which Odin acquired the power to give the gift of language to the
Teutonic peoples is described as follows: before acquiring this
capacity Odin had undergone Initiation by drinking at the spring of
Mimir the magic draught of the Gods, that magic draught which once
upon a time in the primeval past had been the draught of the Giants.
This draught embodied not merely a generalized form of wisdom, but
represented the wisdom that lives directly in the spoken sounds of
speech. At his Initiation Odin won power over that wisdom which lives
in sound. He learned how to make use of it when he underwent a long
Initiation which lasted nine days and from which he was then released
by Mimir, the ancient bearer of wisdom. Thus Odin became Lord of the
power of language. This explains why the later saga traces the
language of the bards or skalds back to Odin. Runic lore which in
olden times was thought to be much more closely related to language
than later literature and letters was also traced back to Odin.
Therefore the manner in which the soul, indirectly through the
etheric body, and interpenetrating the physical body, acquired the
power of speech through the appropriate Archangel is expressed in the
wonderful stories about Odin.
Similar
Archangels are to be found amongst the companions of Odin: Hönir
who gave the power of thought and Lödur who gave that which is
intimately connected with race, namely pigmentation and the character
of the blood. These two Beings, therefore, are Archangels more in the
normal line. In Vili and Ve, on the other hand, we have Archangels of
abnormal development. They are Beings who work more in the inner
life, in the hidden recesses of the soul as I pointed out in the last
lecture. But an ego which is itself at an abnormal stage of evolution
when it witnesses the cultivation of the subordinate forces of the
human soul, feels itself to be intimately related to an abnormal
Archangel. Odin, therefore, is not regarded as an abnormal Archangel,
but rather as the kind of Archangel whose renunciation is akin to
that of the Western peoples who arc more aware that their inner
development had been deferred, whereas the Eastern peoples by-passed
certain stages of their psychic development until they awakened to
ego-consciousness. Hence there lives especially in the soul of the
Teutonic peoples all that is associated with the Archangelic forces
of Odin stirring in the primitive depths of the human soul.
When
we stated that the Angels are responsible for transmitting to the
individual human beings the achievements of the Archangels, so also
an ‘I’ which awakens at such an elementary level of
soul-life is particularly concerned in seeing that the intentions of
the Archangels are communicated to that ego. Hence Germanic-Nordic
man has an interest in an Angel-being who is endowed with special
power, but who at the same time is closely related to the single
human being and his individuality. And that Being is Thor.
[See
Appendix.]
We can only recognize Thor when we see
in him a Being who could have risen to far higher rank had he
followed the normal course of evolution, but who renounced
advancement comparatively early and remained at the stage of a Angel
in order that, at the time when man awoke to ego-consciousness in the
course of his soul's evolution, he could become the guiding
Spirit in the spiritual life of the Teutonic peoples. What gives the
immediate feeling that Thor is related to the individual human ego is
that what was to be transmitted to every individual ‘I’
from the spiritual world could, in fact, be transmitted. If we bear
this in mind we shall also understand more clearly the fragmentary
information that has come down to us. It is important to have a right
understanding of these individual Gods. Germanic-Nordic man perceived
and himself experienced this imprinting of the soul in the body. He
witnessed the integration of the ego into the body and the birth of
ego-consciousness.
Now
we know that the ego is incarnated in the pulsation of our blood and
that everything within has its counterpart without, that everything
microcosmic has its parallel in the macrocosmic. The work of Odin who
gave speech and runic wisdom, who worked indirectly through the
breathing, has its counterpart in the movement of the wind in the
macrocosm. The regular inhalation of the air through our respiratory
organs which transform the air into words and speech corresponds to
the movements and currents of the wind in the macrocosm outside. Just
as we feel within ourselves the power of Odin in the transformation
of air into words, so too we must perceive his presence and activity
in the ambient winds. But those who still preserved a certain degree
of clairvoyance really saw the presence of Odin everywhere in the
cosmic element of the air, saw how he formed speech by means of his
breath. This Nordic man perceived as a unity. Just as that which
lives in us and organizes our speech — that is to say, in the
form in which speech existed amongst the Nordic peoples —
penetrates into the ego and sets the blood pulsating so too the inner
organization of speech in man finds its parallel in the macrocosm in
thunder and lightning. The gift of speech precedes the birth of the
ego in man. Hence the ‘I’ is everywhere felt to be the
son of Odin to whom we owe the gift of speech. Thor plays an active
part in the implanting of the individual ego, and in the microcosm
the pulsation of the blood corresponds to the thunder and lightning
in the macrocosm. Thus, in the macrocosm, the parallel to the
pulsation of the blood in man is the thunder and lightning in the
sighing winds and the weaving clouds. Germanic-Nordic man sees this
clairvoyantly as a unity; he perceives that the soughing of the wind
and the flashing of the lightning are intimately related to the
breathing. He sees how the air he inhales passes into the blood
stream and sets the ‘I’ pulsating. Today this is looked
upon as a physical process, but to Germanic-Nordic man it was an
astral experience. He felt the kinship of the inner fire of the blood
and of outer lightning. He felt the pulse-beat in his blood and knew
it to be the pulse-beat of the ‘I’. He was aware of this
inner pulsation and knew that it would recur. But he paid no heed to
the external physical process. All this was seen clairvoyantly. He
felt that it was the deed of Thor which caused the pulse to beat and
made the blood return again and again to the same source. He felt the
Thor-force in his ‘I’ as the hammer of Thor returning
ever and again into his hand; he felt the power of one of the
mightiest Angels who had ever been honoured or revered, because he
was a mighty Being who was seen to have remained behind at the Angel
stage.
The
way in which the spiritual force holds together the physical body is
described in the Teutonic mythology where it says that the ‘I’
is that which holds together the soul and body in the formative
stage. Germanic-Nordic man sees the weaving of the body and soul from
within, and in later years he still understands how, originating in
the astral, his inner life becomes integrated, how the inner answers,
so to speak, to the outer. He could still respond when he learned
from the Initiates that man was built out of the Cosmos. He was able
to look back to earlier stages, to what had been told him about the
events which reflected the relationship between the Angels and the
Archangels, to those earlier stages when man was born out of the
macrocosm in physical-spiritual form. He was able to perceive how the
individual was built up out of the macrocosm and how he was an
integral part of it. He sought in the macrocosm for those occurrences
which are reflected in the microcosm. He could distinguish in the
human microcosm, the microcosmic North, the cool realm where human
thoughts are woven and whence the body is supplied with the twelve
cranial nerves. He sees the weaving spirit in what he calls Nebelheim
or Niflheim; he sees the twelve rivers which converge to form
physically the twelve cranial nerves. He sees how the forces that
issue from the microcosmic South, from the human heart, counteract
the forces from above. He looks for them outside in the macrocosm and
understands when he is told that they are called Muspelheim. Thus,
even in the Christian era, it was still possible for him to
comprehend the microcosm in terms of the whole macrocosm. And one
could go back further still and show him how man gradually originated
out of the macrocosm as extract of the whole world. He was able to
look back into that time and he could understand that these events
have a long ancestry, which he himself still sees as a working of the
Angels and Archangels into his soul. He realizes that these events
have a long ancestry and the conceptions he thus acquires we
encounter in the old Teutonic Genesis, as the origin of mankind out
of the entire macrocosm.
From
Ginnungagap, the primeval abyss of Teutonic mythology, a new Earth
emerges after having passed through the three earlier incarnations of
Old Saturn, Old Sun, and Old Moon. The emergent world without form
and void comes forth again out of Pralaya where the kingdoms of
nature are not yet differentiated and men are still undivided and
completely spiritual beings. It was then clear to Nordic man how the
later conditions have developed out of this original abyss.
Now
it is interesting to see how the events of those times are portrayed
in Teutonic mythology in the form of imaginative pictures, events
which we in our anthroposophical teachings describe in more
sophisticated terms, using concepts in place of images. In
Anthroposophy we are given a description of the events which took
place when the Sun and Moon were still united, of the separation of
the Moon and of the evolutionary transition to the later
“Riesenheim”. Everything which existed during the
Atlantean epoch is described as a continuation of earlier epochs and
as the particular concern of the Teutonic or Germanic people.
Today
I only wanted to give an idea of how the Germanic peoples awakened to
the ego while still at an elementary stage of evolution and how
Nordic man perceived in full consciousness the Folk Soul, the soul of
Thor and so on. I wanted to show how, as an ego-being, he was able to
respond immediately to the in-weaving of still higher Beings who,
however, come from an entirely different realm from those we find
among the Eastern peoples.
Tomorrow
we shall attempt to explore the lesser-known branches of Teutonic
mythology. We shall discover how they are harbingers of that which
dwells in the Folk Souls and we shall see what is the nature of our
Western Folk Souls.
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