LECTURE TWELVE
MYSTERY TEACHINGS IN ST. MARK'S GOSPEL
In the course
of the years we have spoken about the deeper meanings of the
Gospels of St. Matthew, St. Luke and St. John, and here in
Hanover, too, about the mysteries of Christianity. You will
have realised that each of the Gospels provides a special
means of penetrating to the core of the Christian message. It
is almost truer to say of the Gospel of St. Mark than of the
others that if it is to help us to gain some understanding of
Christianity, we must make a certain basic assumption.
In studying
this Gospel it is essential to be aware of how language was
used as a means of expression in past ages of evolution. The
ancient Hebrew language opens up a wide horizon in this
respect. Those of you who were present at the lecture-course
in Munich on
Genesis: The Bible Story of Creation,
must have realised how necessary it was to give an adequate
translation of particular words before the six or seven
days’ work of creation could be understood, and how
essential it is to re-create these ancient records in order
to bring to light the inner, spiritual truths they indicate.
In the Hebrew language the vowels and consonants were used
very differently from anything that is customary to-day. What
a man saw round about him was indicated in that ancient
language by the consonants; the vowels expressed inner
experiences of the soul and were indicated by dots only. In
those early times, and even in the Greek language, a word in
itself was an indication of a supersensible reality. Everyone
knew that a spoken word containing certain sounds or
syllables would arouse in the soul a whole series of mental
pictures. A very great deal could be conveyed in a few words
because all these factors were operating. We must always bear
this in mind when we are studying the Gospel of St. Mark. We
must not restrict ourselves to the actual words, because the
words by themselves cannot lead us into the secrets and
mysteries of that Gospel.
Let me give
you one or two illustrations. In earlier times, language was
a means for the expression of realities of soul and spirit.
In our day it is a means for the expression of abstract
thinking and this is very far removed from the living,
pictorial thinking which alone can point the way into
spiritual worlds. If we want to recover that kind of living
thinking we must alter the forms of expression in our
language accordingly. Language has become pedantic, useful
only as an expression of abstract thinking; it has entirely
lost the living quality which is able to lead into higher
regions through the words of language and to unite the soul
with the mysteries of the Universe. In the Rosicrucian
Mystery Play,
The Portal of Initiation,
beginnings
have been made to infuse real life into language. It is often
a matter of subtle nuances. Our language is crude, lacks
suppleness, and it is only with a struggle that it can be
made to express the delicate aspects of spiritual life. That
is why I tried to manipulate language in such a way as to
point to secrets of existence. In the Mystery Play I made an
attempt to use other means to express a great deal that words
cannot express. In the Play a man is striving to take the
first steps towards Initiation, to hear spiritual tones
resounding in his soul. The Play describes the many deep
experiences undergone by Johannes in the course of his
development. His progress is such that through the bitterest
but at the same time the most powerful inner experiences, he
reaches the realm of Devachan in the spiritual world where he
is to be introduced to the life and activity of the elemental
beings there. Any attempt to express this in ordinary words
could only result in abstractions. And so I tried to present
living people, expressing in their own nature the mysteries
of how light and darkness interweave. In this way I tried to
make audible in actual sounds things which, expressed in the
words of modern language, would have seemed unreal. One must
listen intently to the sound of the words and feel how the
right sound occurs at the right place, sensing where a sound
is appropriate and where it is not. This is a kind of
spiritual alchemy. And by such means it is possible to
indicate the interweaving life and activity of the spiritual
forces in the Universe.
In the Mystery
Play, Johannes is welcomed in Devachan by Maria and her
companions, Philia, Astrid and Luna. Philia is the poetic
representation of the sentient soul, hence the sound I (ee)
occurs twice and A once in her name. Luna is the expression
of the consciousness-soul, hence U and A occur once in her
name. Astrid, the expression of the intellectual or mind-soul
has in her name first the sound A then I (ee). In this way a
great deal can be expressed more truly than in words. If a
feeling for such things could be aroused there is a great
deal which I might be able to omit. You must learn to feel
the significance of the U with its dull, deep ring, the
lightness of the I (ee) and the delicate significance of the
AI or EI, with the sense of wonder it awakens in the soul.
This brings a kind of understanding different from anything
to be gained through ordinary words. The sounds of language
make it a most wonderful instrument, infinitely wiser than
human beings, and it would be well for us to pay heed to its
wisdom. Far from that, however, men are doing what they can
to destroy it. If we want to have any understanding at all of
earlier times with their peculiar forms of expression, we
must penetrate into what was then living in the souls of
men.
When we read
the lines at the very beginning of St. Mark's Gospel we
can feel how necessary it is to think in this way about
language and its secrets. In Luther's translation,
which in most respects is still the best —
Weizsäcker's is far inferior — the passage
from Isaiah reads: ‘Behold I send my Angel before thee
who shall prepare thy way before thee. It is the voice of the
preacher in the wilderness: ”Prepare the way of the
Lord, make straight his path”.’
You would
think that anyone who is honest with himself would have to
admit that he can make nothing of this passage. To understand
what it really means Spiritual Science must enable us to
recognise what, according to Isaiah who was initiated in
these mysteries, was to come to pass through the events of
Palestine and the Mystery of Golgotha. In our day nobody is
willing to admit that there are men who really can tell us
something important about the most significant impulses in
world-evolution. Consequently we have grotesque explanations
of the Apocalypse and assertions that the writer had himself
already experienced the happenings described. People talk
about objective research but always start with the assumption
that what they do not know cannot be known. In the words just
quoted, Isaiah is giving voice to something he knew through
Initiation, namely that an impulse of supreme importance is
to be given to the evolution of humanity. Why did he, and all
other Initiates, regard this event to which he was pointing
as being of such significance? His picture of the evolution
of humanity was true and he knew that in earlier times men
possessed a natural clairvoyance, moreover that through the
astral body they were able to see into the spiritual worlds.
The astral body gradually lost the power of vision and became
inwardly dark but man's progress lay in this very loss
of astral clairvoyance. It was now to be made possible for
the ‘I’ to function. Out of his
Initiation-knowledge Isaiah might also have said: In those
days men will speak only of their Ego and as long as that Ego
is not filled with Christ it will be restricted to perception
of the physical plane furnished by the senses and intellect.
Men will be forsaken by the world of the spirit. But then
Christ will come, bringing consolation, and human souls will
be permeated more and more with the Christ Impulse so that
they can again look upwards into the spiritual world. Before
this is possible, however, they will experience the darkening
of the astral body.
The very first
beginnings of man's physical body came into being on
Old Saturn, of his etheric body on Old Sun, of his astral
body on Old Moon; and the Ego evolves on the Earth. Until the
astral body lost its clairvoyant powers and became dark, the
Ego had at first to work in the darkness. Before
Earth-evolution began in the real sense a kind of
recapitulation of the Moon-evolution took place. During that
period man's astral body had developed to a stage where
the activity of the whole Universe was mirrored within it.
When the recapitulation of the Moon-evolution was completed
the Ego began to enter into the process of evolution and
Isaiah could say that Egohood would become more and more
dominant on the Earth.
There were
Beings who had reached the human stage on the Old Moon,
others on Old Sun and Old Saturn. Man reached the human stage
on the Earth. On the Old Moon the Angels reached the human
stage and man has reached the human stage on the Earth.
Consequently it devolved upon the Beings who were man's
forerunners to make preparation for what man was to become on
the Earth. The Angel-nature must penetrate into the astral
body before the Ego can become active. Man's mission on
Earth was prepared for by his forerunners — the Angels.
Hence it is possible at certain times for an Angel to enter
into a human personality. When this happens the Earth-man
himself may well be maya, for a Being of higher rank is
making use of his soul. The man is in truth the figure we see
before us, yet he may be the sheath of some other Being. Thus
it came about that the same Individuality who had once lived
as Elijah and was reincarnated as John the Baptist became the
vehicle of an Angel who spoke through him. In
The Portal of Initiation
a similar process takes place and another
Being works in and through Maria:
Within our
circle there is formed a knot
Of threads that Karma spins, world-fashioning.
Thy sufferings, my friend, are links in chains
Forged by the hand of destiny, whereby
The deeds of Gods unite with human lives.
(The
Portal of Initiation. Scene 3)
A deed of the
Gods mingles with human life and creates human destiny.
Thus in John
the Baptist a deed of the Heavens was united with human
destiny. A divine Being, an Angel, worked in and through him.
What John achieved was possible only because, while the man
John was maya, another Being lived within him, having the
mission to proclaim in advance what man's destiny on
Earth was to be. Consequently, if we are to translate the
passage in a way that helps us to understand what is actually
expressed, the rendering would have to be something like
this. — ‘Take heed: the ‘I’ which is to
appear in man's being sends in advance the Angel who
prepares its way.’ The Angel is the Being who lived in
the personality of John the Baptist, and the lesson to be
learnt from Spiritual Science is that Moon Initiates must
make preparation for Initiations that belong essentially to
the Earth.
We must now
consider how man's nature had developed up to the time
of the Mystery of Golgotha. Think of what men must have felt
when they looked back to those past ages when the astral body
could see clairvoyantly into the spiritual world, and then,
as incarnation followed incarnation, realised that this
astral body was growing steadily darker. In earlier times,
when they wanted to observe something in the spiritual world
their astral bodies became luminous and radiant. But this
gradually ceased and darkness in the astral body intensified
until there was within man a state of isolation, a
wilderness,
ἔρημος.
Even in Greek the expression is to be found. Then a voice
awakens in the human soul, like a cry of longing for the
‘Lord’, for the ‘I’, to enter into
the soul. This was the feeling accompanying the word
χὐριοç,
translated so baldly as ‘lord’. The soul was felt
to consist of three forces: thinking, feeling and willing.
Then a time came when the ‘I’, the
kyrios, was to be received into the soul. This is
what John the Baptist meant by the words: Prepare ye the way
of the Lord, make his paths straight!
Thus the
quotation from Isaiah at the beginning of St. Mark's
Gospel points to the wisdom-filled guidance of human
evolution up to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. This
utterance of Isaiah also indicated what we now know about
John the Baptist. I have described under what
conÂditions he was able to become the vehicle of
an Angel. A certain Initiation was necessary for this — the
Initiation which enabled the man receiving it to reveal to
other men that the time had now come for the ‘I’
to penetrate into the human soul.
This could be
proclaimed only by one who had received the Initiation known
since ancient times as the Aquarius Initiation in the
terminology used in the Mysteries. The language of the
heavens was used to express the great secrets of the
spiritual world made known to men through
InitiaÂtion. The language of the heavens alone is
able to express what happens to the human soul when it is
initiated into the great Mysteries. Such things cannot be
described by human words. Men looked up to the stars,
observed their relations to one another and said to
themselves: if we can frame adequate expressions for what the
stars reveal, that is the most fitting way to indicate the
nature of the mysterious processes operating in a man during
a particular Initiation.
No matter what
name was used in the various civilisaÂtions, it
was always the great Ahura Mazdao to whom men looked up: they
looked up to that Divine Being and to his hierarchy in the
Sun. Christ is the supreme Spirit of the Sun Beings. There
are twelve different ways in which Initiation into the sacred
Mysteries of the Sun can take place and to explain this in
human words is hardly possible. But if we think of the Sun
standing in one of the constellations and sending its rays
through that constellation to the Earth, and if we consider
how it is related to other stars, we have a kind of script
which expresses the fact that a particular man is initiated
into the Sun-Mysteries in a way that makes him an Aquarius
Initiate.
Take, for
instance, the seven holy Rishis. The symbol of their
Initiation into the Sun-Mysteries is the picture of the Sun
in Taurus. When the Sun stands in the sign of Taurus the
spectacle presented in the firmament reveals the mystery of
the particular Initiation of the Rishis. This Initiation took
effect through the seven personalities who were the seven
holy Rishis. This is also expressed in the fact that the
Pleiades, a cluster of seven stars, shine from the same
region of the heavens. That is moreover the region where the
whole solar system entered into the Universe to which we
belong. So in order to specify the various forms of
Initiation into the Sun-Mysteries we can use expressions
indicating the Sun's position in a particular
constellation.
John the
Baptist had necessarily to receive an Aquarius Initiation,
the expression indicating that the Sun was standing in the
constellation of Aquarius. Try to understand it in this way:
On the day or light side of the Zodiac lie Aries, Taurus,
Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, then Libra. The constellations on
the night or dark side of the Zodiac are Scorpio,
Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces. Since the last
two lie on the night side, the Sun's rays coming from
them must not only traverse physical space but they must send
the spiritual light of the Sun, which passes through the
Earth, through spiritual space. Aquarius Initiates received
this name because they were able to confer the water-baptism,
that is to say, to enable men, while immersed in water, to be
sustained by the power of the spiritual Sun.
It is the
facts of the spiritual life here on Earth from which the
names of the zodiacal constellations are derived, by
transference to the heavens. Our so-called learned men,
however, explain such things by saying that the names of the
constellations in the heavens were given to certain
personalities on Earth. The truth is just the opposite!
Nowadays it is said that John the Baptist was called the
‘Water-man’ because that name had been derived
from the constellation and applied to him. But that is really
putting the cart before the horse. You will have heard of a
certain savant's ironical attempt to establish that
Napoleon was not an historical figure. The argument was that
the name ‘Napoleon’ is easily derived from
‘Apollo’, the prefix N indicating comparative
rank — therefore a kind of super-Apollo. Napoleon had six
brothers and sisters and the star Apollo is included among
the seven Pleiades. Napoleon's twelve Marshals are said
to be the twelve signs of the Zodiac and Apollo's
mother, Leto, becomes Napoleon's mother, Letitia ...
and so on, in the same strain!
If we trace
the course of the Sun in the heavens we find that as the
physical Sun sets the spiritual Sun begins to rise. In its
day or summer course the Sun progresses from Taurus to Aries,
and so on; in its night or winter course it will reveal to us
the secrets of the Initiation of Aquarius or Pisces.
Physically, the Sun's course is from Virgo to Leo,
Cancer, Gemini, Taurus, Aries; spiritually its course is from
Virgo to Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn and Aquarius
to Pisces. The spiritual counterpart of the course of the
physical Sun is its passage from Aquarius to Pisces.
Consequently
John could say: He must increase but I must decrease. My
mission is one of which you will have a picture when the Sun
passes from the sign of Aquarius to that of Pisces. I am an
Aquarius Initiate and I am not worthy to give you the secrets
of the Sun in Pisces. I am not worthy to unloose the
shoe-latchet of the One I am to proclaim to you.
In these words
John speaks of himself unambiguously as an Aquarius Initiate.
Pictures in old calendars indicate the meaning of his words
when he says: ‘The latchet of whose shoe I am not
worthy to unloose’. In old pictures of the zodiacal
constellations the Waterman is shown kneeling. His whole
posture indicates the reverence he must feel for the Sun as
it passes him by and rising in Pisces reveals what is to
come. This is the picture of John the Baptist: the Sun passes
on and he cannot detain it; he can only proclaim in advance
what is to be.
The prophet
Isaiah knew that when the Sun progressed to Pisces a new
dispensation was to come. This progression signifies the
advent of men or beings connected with the Pisces Initiation.
That is why the sign for Christ Jesus in the earliest
Christian times was the fish or two fishes still to be seen
in the catacombs of Rome. Why did Jesus say to His disciples:
‘I will make you fishers of men’? John the
Baptist prepared for the Pisces Initiation which the Nazarene
had to undergo if the Christ was to descend into him. The
events in Palestine, the most important in the whole process
of world-evolution, are inscribed in wonderful signs in the
Zodiac. What came to pass step by step in Palestine is
explained in its depths not through any human script but
through a heavenly script which must be consulted for any
real understanding of a process so exalted that it is
directly related to the Macrocosm. What the physical eye saw
moving about Palestine in the flesh and blood of Jesus of
Nazareth — was that all? If you remember the indications I
have given, it was maya, illusion. Actually the whole
spiritual power, the central spiritual power, of the Sun was
present in the figure of Jesus of Nazareth moving about
Palestine; the figure that appeared physically as Jesus of
Nazareth was maya.
Everything
Christ Jesus did was connected with macrocosmic events. Think
of how often in St. Mark's Gospel it is said that
Christ performed His acts of healing after the Sun had set or
before it had risen. Thus we are told: In the evening, when
the Sun had set, they brought to Him all manner of sick and
possessed. (i, 32). Why were the sick and possessed brought
to Him at just that time? Because the Sun had set and its
forces were no longer working physically in Jesus, but
spiritually; what He was to do was not connected with the
physical forces of the Sun. The physical Sun had set, but the
spiritual Sun-forces worked through His heart and body. And
when He wanted to unfold His greatest and most powerful
forces He had necessarily to exert them at a time when the
physical Sun was not visible in the heavens. So also when we
read: ‘Before the Sun had risen’ — the words
have a definite meaning. Every word in St. Mark's
Gospel indicates great cosmic connections between processes
in the universe and every step taken and every deed performed
by Christ in the body of Jesus of Nazareth here on Earth. If
you were to draw a map of the paths He trod and the deeds He
performed and were then to study the corresponding processes
in the heavens, the picture would be the same: processes in
the heavens would seem to have been projected down to the
Earth.
Whence did a
man like Kepler derive the principles of his
astronomy? In his life as Kepler he did not find the powers
which enabled him to epitomise the fundamentals of astronomy
in his three great laws. These three laws describe in words
the movement of the planets around their fixed star. Kepler
was able to discover them only because his enthusiasm caused
certain memories to arise in him. In a previous incarnation
he had been a pupil of the old Egyptian Mysteries. In him,
and in many others too, those experiences rose up again as
dim intuitions. Such men had in their life of soul much that
was an expression of the harmony of the spheres. Kepler
studied the wonderful constellations to be seen in the
heavens during his life. He observed the conjunction of
Saturn, Jupiter and Moon and through it sought to explain the
star by which the Three Wise Men from the East were guided.
Abstractions as appalling as the Kant-Laplace theory had not
been devised in Kepler's day.
The Gospel of
St. Mark gives expression to the wonderful harmony between
the great Cosmos and what was to come to pass once on our
Earth through the deeds of Christ Jesus and the Mystery of
Golgotha. We cannot understand this Gospel unless we can
decipher the writing of the stars and that requires insight
into the secrets of the language of the heavens. When the
Gospel says that the Sun had set, this does not indicate
merely that the Sun was no longer shining but also that the
spiritual Beings of the Sun-Hierarchy had moved into a world
of stronger spiritual powers because they must now work
through the Earth, through the physical substance of
the Earth. All this was felt by men when they were told of
what came to pass through Christ Jesus after the Sun had set.
A whole world of meaning lay in the words.
I hope that
these few indications will help us to penetrate more deeply
into the secrets of the Gospels. Particularly through the
study of St. Mark's Gospel the human soul can rise to
an understanding of wonderful mysteries of cosmic happenings.
Every word in that Gospel is of great significance.
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